The Glass Spider Tour was a 1987 worldwide concert tour by David Bowie, launched in support of his album Never Let Me Down. It began in May 1987 and was preceded by a two-week press tour that saw Bowie visit nine countries throughout Europe and North America to drum up public interest in the tour. The Glass Spider Tour was the first Bowie tour to visit Austria, Italy, Spain, Ireland and Wales. Through a sponsorship from Pepsi, the tour was intended to visit Russia and South America as well, but these plans were later cancelled. The tour was, at that point, the longest and most expensive tour Bowie had embarked upon in his career. At the time, the tour's elaborate set was called "the largest touring set ever".[1]

Bowie conceived the tour as a theatrical show, and included spoken-word introductions to some songs, vignettes, and employed visuals including projected videos, theatrical lighting and stage props. On stage, Bowie was joined by guitarist Peter Frampton and a troupe of five dancers (choreographed by long-time Bowie collaborator Toni Basil). With the theme "Rock stars vs Reality", the show was divided into two acts and an encore. The set list was modified over the course of the tour as Bowie dropped some of his newer material in favour of older songs from his repertoire.

The tour was generally poorly received at the time for being overblown and pretentious. Despite the criticism, Bowie in 1991 remarked that this tour laid the groundwork for later successful theatrical tours by other artists, and the set's design and the show's integration of music and theatrics has inspired later acts by a variety of artists. Starting in the late 2000s, the tour began to collect accolades for its successes, and in 2010 the tour was named one of the top concert tour designs of all time.

The tour was financially successful and well-attended (being seen by perhaps as many as six million fans worldwide), but the poor critical reception of the album and tour led Bowie to not only abandon plans for other elaborate stage shows, but to reconsider his motivations for making music. The tour was named after the album track "Glass Spider", and performances from this tour were released on the VHS video Glass Spider (1988, re-released on DVD in 2007).

Preparations for the tour began as early as 1986, when Bowie warned his band to "be ready for next year."[2] Bowie was initially mum on his plans for his tour, saying only "I'm going to do a stage thing this year, which I'm incredibly excited about, 'cause I'm gonna take a chance again." When asked if he would elaborate on his plans, he replied "No! [Laughs.] Too many other acts are goin' out. I'll just be doing what I always did, which is keeping things interesting."[3]

"I've eaten, slept, and thought about nothing but this show for six months."[4]

—David Bowie, June 1987 in London

In announcing the tour, Bowie embarked on a series of promotional press shows covering 9 countries in 2 weeks, including Canada, the US and seven countries in Europe. The press tour shows were typically delivered in smaller venues seating around 300 people, and local fans were often allowed into the events.[2] He used the opportunity to educate the press on his album and the tour, and the multiple dates allowed him to correct misinformation. At the London Glass Spider Press Conference, he clarified that "I didn't say 'lights, costumes and sex,' what I said was 'lights, costumes and theatrical sets'" in response to a question about what the audience could expect when seeing his new live show.[5] Press tour shows included live performances of some of the songs from the album Never Let Me Down.

Bowie was joined by long-time friend Peter Frampton on the tour. Frampton said "I don't have a book to sell; I don't have an album to sell; I'm just here as a guitarist. The pressure is off. I'm enjoying myself." Frampton and Bowie had known each other since their teen years when they both attended Bromley Technical School, where Frampton's father was Bowie's art teacher.[6]

Bowie had a clear goal for this tour: to return to the theatrics that he had performed during his short-lived 1974 Diamond Dogs Tour.[7] He wanted this tour to be "ultra-theatrical, a combination of music, theater, and rock",[8] and he felt that his previous tour, while successful, had veered away from the theatrics that he preferred:

David Bowie being lowered from the spider set's ceiling, to the opening song "Glass Spider" at Rock am Ring – 7 June 1987

[In 1983 for the Serious Moonlight Tour] the promoters were coming around and saying, "Listen David, we moved you from this 10,000 seater up to this 30,000-seater" ... and it grew and grew and there were 60,000-seaters coming up. ... Let's trim back on the theatrics and really go for giving them songs that they've heard on the radio for the last 15 years or so – songs they probably didn't realize when added up are a great body of work coming from this guy. ... Whereas with [The Glass Spider] tour coming up, I feel I've established that. What I now want to do is have the songs work for the performance. ... Certainly there will be obscure songs on it, at least for the general public. There will be songs from albums that weren't huge albums, but now those particular songs actually fit a section of the show. So when you put three songs together, you can create a vignette that works. It has a beginning and a conclusion and deals with one subject.[7]

Bowie indicated that he was "testing the waters" with this tour, and was potentially considering other large, elaborate stage shows if the tour was successful:

The songs have to work within the show—not the show working for the songs, if you see what I mean. That's why it's so different. And that's why it's so exciting, because that's the way I really like working. I mean, I like devising a show. I've got a show book that is almost like the bible you have when you're working on a play. It's written and structured with various thematic devices. Unfortunately, it's in revue form, because none of the songs were written for the show. That's the ultimate, of course. If this works the way I hope it does, then the next step for me will be to write a piece specifically for arenas and stadiums, which is almost like taking a musical on the road that has one narrative form all the way through, with a cast of characters, and is written for epic theater.[7]

Bowie decided that the theme for the show would be "the reality and unreality of rock,"[8] or, as one critic called it, "rock stars vs. reality".[9] Bowie said, "It's not just about a rock singer, it's about rock music, so it has a lot to do with the audience and how they perceive rock, and rock figures, and all the cliches, archetypes and stereotypes, and also family relationship."[8]

During the show itself, Bowie incorporated a wide variety of props: "I'm really attempting to do a lot of stuff! It incorporates movement, dialogue, fragments of film, projected images, it's what used to be called multi-media in the '60s."[8] Bowie described how he assembled the show, saying, "The idea was to concoct surrealist or minimalist stage pieces to accompany rock-and-roll songs. I wanted to bridge together some kind of symbolist theater and modern dance. Not jazz dance, certainly not MTV dance, but something more influenced by people like Pina Bausch and a Montreal group called [La La La Human Steps]. There are some symbolist pieces, some minimalist pieces, and some vulgar pieces, too – some straightforward vaudeville bits."[10]

When Bowie was asked what he thought his audience expected of him on this tour, he said:

I guess that they come along to see whether I'll fall down or something. I really don't know. I know that they get what they consider is a really good performance. I think that over the years I've proved that I do my best to provide them with some new vision of musical information on the stage. So I think there's probably that element in it, but I couldn't go any further than that. I really don't know what they want from me. I've never really been able to write for them. I've only written and performed that which interests me. So essentially they have an agreement with me and that's great. I mean, I've lost audiences many times over the years, and they've come back again for one reason or another. I've sort of got that mutual agreement with them. If it's not going very well then they stay away. Which is fair enough, you know.[11]

Bowie reportedly coordinated aspects of the tour via email, a rarity in the late 1980s.[12]

Bowie elected to play less well-known songs on the tour and avoided some of his bigger hits.[9][13] He was eager to not repeat the formula that made the Serious Moonlight Tour a success, saying, "It seemed so easy. It was cheers from the word go. You know how to get a reaction – play 'Changes,' 'Golden Years' and they'd be up on their feet. You get the reaction, take the money and run away. It seemed too easy. I didn't want to do that again."[14] In a different contemporary interview he said, "I'm not doing 'Star' again. That was quite hard. I don't think I'm doing much Ziggy material on this tour! [laughs] Probably use a lot of that mid-70s material, but not the more ponderous things like 'Warszawa.' I tried that, and that was a bit yawn-making. There was one I was humming to myself the other day: [sings] 'Baby, baby, I'll never let you down' – oh lord, what's that one? Jesus, I can't remember it. ... 'Sons of the Silent Age!' [snaps fingers] Ah! That's right! Thank god I could remember it! So that for me now is a new song. I've never done that one onstage."[15] "Sons of the Silent Age" was performed every night of the tour.

All but two songs ("Too Dizzy" and "Shining Star (Makin' My Love)") from his album Never Let Me Down were played live during the tour, although "Shining Star" was among the songs rehearsed. Other songs rehearsed but not performed were "Because You're Young" and "Scream Like a Baby", both from Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) (1980).[2] Several songs that Bowie had anticipated playing on the tour were abandoned before rehearsals even started, including "Space Oddity" (from David Bowie (1969)), "Joe the Lion" (from "Heroes" (1977)), "Ricochet" (from Let's Dance (1983)), and "Don't Look Down" (from Tonight (1984)).[15]

Songs performed during the tour were "chosen because they fit the performance"[5] and fit Bowie's goal to make a show that was much more theatrical and had strong dramatic content. When he was asked how he was going to make his rock show "dramatic", he replied, "You'll be surprised what you can do with a 6-piece rock band and a stage and a couple of lights."[16]

The tour's set, described at the time as "the largest touring set ever,"[1] was designed to look like a giant spider. It was 60 feet (18.3m) high, 64 feet (19.5m) wide and included giant vacuumed tube legs that were lit from the inside with 20,000' (6,096m) of color-changing lights.[10][17] A single set took 43 trucks to move and was estimated to weigh 360 tons.[10] 16' x 20' (4.9m x 6m) video screens displayed video and images from the show to those in the audience who were further away from the stage.[18] The system required to run the show included two separate sound systems, 260 speaker cabinets, 1,000 lights (with an output total of 600,000 watts)[2] and three computers.[19]Mark Ravitz, the set designer, had previously designed Bowie's 1974 Diamond Dogs Tour set.[20]

This was Bowie's first tour where wireless microphone technology was available, allowing Bowie considerable freedom to move around the stage during a concert.[2] This allowed him to interact with the dancers and musicians much more freely, and as such the set included 3-story high mobile scaffolding, onto which Bowie and his dancers would occasionally climb during the show.[21]

Each set cost US$10 million,[4][22] about $21.5 million in today's dollars.[23] Bowie himself invested over $10 million of his own money to help fund the tour,[1] and he paid $1 million a week[6] to maintain a staff of 150 people to maintain and build the three sets as the tour moved around the world.[4][19] In Philadelphia, where the tour opened in the US, the set was described as taking "300 people 4 days" to build.[24]

About halfway through the first leg of the tour in Europe, Bowie discovered that the full Spider set was so large that it would not fit in most indoor venues. He said, "It would cost me between $500,000 and $600,000 to alter the sets enough to bring the show indoors. ... I may decide to have a smaller 'indoor' set made somewhere during the tour."[11] He did in fact commission a third slightly smaller set (called the "Junior Bug" set) to be used at indoor venues where the full spider would not fit, such as New York's Madison Square Garden.[6]

Bowie thought of the whole set as a metaphor of life, describing the stage as having "a feeling of a ship, which is the voyage, with the rigging and the climbing and the ropes. And the bottom circular area is like the Circus of Lights, so it really is from birth, and the voyaging through life."[25]

Bowie assembled his band in early 1987 and were joined on stage by five dancers who were choreographed by Bowie's long-time friend Toni Basil. The band and the dancers spent time in 12-hour-a-day rehearsals in New York before moving on to Europe. Bowie described his rehearsal routine:

I prepare the day's work when I get up in the morning, and then I go in around 10 o'clock (a.m.) for rehearsals. Then it's constant rehearsals, both the visual side and the musical side, through about 8 o'clock (p.m.). At around 8 p.m. I look at the video tapes of what we've been doing during the day, and make adjustments if necessary. So there really isn't time to do anything else at all except Sundays, and then I sleep for most of the day. It's very intensive rehearsals, and physically it's quite demanding.[11]

"[The Glass Spider Tour is] the most physical tour that I've done ever. ... It's relentless, it never stops. I'm bruised as hell. I feel like a worn out rag doll."[26]

—David Bowie, 1987

Rehearsals with the full Spider set were staged in Rotterdam's Ahoy Stadium starting on 18 May before moving to De Kuip stadium for the dress rehearsals (27 and 28 May).[27][28] Due to relatively easy access to the venues during rehearsals, fans knew what the set list for the show would be before the tour even opened.[2]

Bowie stated that he was looking for dancers who did not look like typical MTV dancers and who knew both American street-dancing and European performance art.[25] Originally Bowie had hoped to have Édouard Lock of La La La Human Steps be involved in the show, but the group was booked with other commitments. Bowie later lamented that the Tour may have been viewed differently if La La La Human Steps had been involved: "It would have been a different ballgame."[29] La La La Human Steps would provide the choreography for Bowie's next tour, the Sound+Vision Tour of 1990.[29]

Bowie entered the show to the song "Glass Spider", for which he was lowered from the set's ceiling while seated in a silver chair and singing into a telephone. Bowie was dressed in a single-breasted three-quarters length red suit, a red shirt, and red shoes. The show's first vignette began with "Bang Bang", during which Bowie pulled an audience member out of the crowd, only to be rejected by the fan, who by the end of the song was revealed to be one of the troupe's dancers. Later in the show, for the song "Fashion", the dance troupe threatened Bowie with a street fight, which, by the end of the song, he accidentally wins. For the live rendition of "Never Let Me Down", the performance of which Bowie called "abrasive",[30] he was influenced by the minimalist choreography of Pina Bausch. He said:

I wanted one straight movement that starts upstage and comes all the way downstage and doesn't vary. I'm on my knees, with my arms in a kind of straitjacket, and a crawl for three-and-a-half minutes. A girl is with me, as if she's accompanying her pet in a park, but she has a cylinder on her back, and every now and then she's giving me oxygen. It felt like a very protective, a very sad little image, and it felt right for the song.[10]

For Part 2, Bowie appeared on the stage's scaffolding to "'87 & Cry", flew through the air in a Flying by Foyabseiling harness, and was subsequently tied up by riot police. On at least one occasion, the flying segment of the song was dropped due to a malfunction with the set. The movie footage shown behind Bowie during "'Heroes'" was shot by Bowie during his time in Russia in 1974. Of the footage, Bowie said:

There's a poignant image of a Mongolian with a hanky in his hand waving goodbye to his family getting on a train to Moscow and I loop that up so there's a never ending sequence of this old fellow dabbing his tears and waving bye-bye. That plays behind the action in black and white and it's alarmingly sad. It's like saying goodbye to heroism; it's like saying goodbye to a world of a 19th century ideal. It's irretrievable and now maybe we’re just looking for seeds of intelligence and not heroes. There's something about it that I really like. It's a piece of theatricality that I really adore. I’m really proud of it.[31]

The encore typically opened with the song "Time", for which Bowie emerged from the top of the spider's head with angel wings behind him, 60 feet above the crowd. The song was occasionally cut from outdoor shows when bad weather made the perch atop the spider too precarious to perform. Bowie's outfit for the encore was a gold lamé leather suit complete with gold winged cowboy boots. One of these suits, autographed by Bowie, sold at a Sotheby's auction in 1990 for $7,000 (worth about $13,100 today),[23] several times its expected selling price.[32][a] That same outfit was again put up for auction in December 2016 with an expected selling price of $20,000-$30,000, and was sold for $32,500.[34] One of the outfits that Bowie wore for Part 2, also signed by Bowie, was put up for auction on 21 May 2016[35] and was sold for $37,500.[36]

The tour took a physical toll on Bowie. Not only did he grow noticeably thinner over the course of the tour,[2] he found that he was exhausted before the tour even started:

I think [tours like this] are extravagantly dangerous to do because they're so fucking tiring. Just the pressures of organising the event, and it's no longer a show, it's an event. Even before you go out on tour, you're knackered. There's God knows how many people running around, and everybody's doing something and people are forgetting to delegate jobs to the right people, and it's a mass of confusion and somehow it's all supposed to come together.[39]

A modern aerial view of De Kuip, where Bowie opened the tour

The tour played at large-capacity venues, and in Europe the tour alternated between indoor and outdoor, open-field venues.[2] Michael Clark, a lighting engineer for the tour, died at the Stadio Comunale in Florence, Italy on 9 June after falling from the scaffolding before the show commenced.[40] The following day on 10 June, another worker fell (without lethal injury) while helping build the set in Milan. Mobs of fans, some who had camped out overnight to get into the venue, rioted and had to be controlled by police.[2][41] Both shows in Rome (on 15 and 16 June) saw similar rioting as fans who could not get tickets to the shows clashed with police. On the second night, Bowie had to sing through tear gas as 50 people were arrested and 15 policemen were injured in the rioting.[42] As the band's plane was leaving Rome after their show on 16 June, a bomb scare forced the plane to return to the airport, only to discover that the local chief of police had used it as a ruse to get Bowie's autograph. Said Bowie of the incident, "I was not so much annoyed as stunned – that could only happen in Italy!"[43] The 27 June concert, originally scheduled to be performed at Ullevi, Gothenburg, Sweden had to be moved to nearby Eriksberg in Hisingen because a previous concert by Bruce Springsteen held at Ullevi Stadium incurred £2.7m (or about £7m today)[44] in damages. A fan trying to enter the Slane Castle backstage area by swimming the River Boyne drowned just before the show on 11 July.[2]

At one point during the European tour, guitarist Carlos Alomar ripped a ligament in his leg, an injury that caused him to change his on-stage character. Said Alomar, "[I] had to change my character into the mad, limping Mad Max reject with spiky hair. I went to a chiropractor and asked him for a lot of metal stuff -- leg braces, back braces and everything. Now I'll be adding more metal as the show progresses."[45]

The Glass Spider Tour was the first Bowie tour to reach Austria, Italy, Spain, Ireland and Wales.[2] Some of the outdoor performances in Britain had to start early due to curfew laws (a problem typically avoided in other European shows), which reduced the impact of the lighting of the stage and set dressing, and bothered Bowie considerably.[2][25]

During the North American leg of the tour, a 30-year-old woman claimed that Bowie sexually assaulted her at the Mansion Hotel after a show at Reunion Arena in Dallas. A grand jury cleared Bowie of all charges a year later.[46]

A promotional flyer advertising the tour and showing Duran Duran as the opening act

Demand for tickets to the tour was high: The 3 September show at Sullivan Stadium in Massachusetts set a record for quickest sellout at that venue, a record matched by U2 and unsurpassed until The Who sold 100,000 tickets to two shows there in less than 8 hours in 1989.[47] For one venue, Bowie sold US$3 million worth of tickets to 3 shows in 90 minutes.[48] The concert drew the largest crowd ever to see a concert in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada at the time.[49] Advance sales for the Australian leg of the tour was $8.6 million, surpassing even Michael Jackson's advance sales for the Australian leg of his "Bad" concert tour (estimated at $4.5 million).[50]

Writers have estimated that by the conclusion of the tour between two[51] and six[6] million people had attended, with another source suggesting that three million fans saw the tour worldwide.[2]

Four of the tour's shows were among the Top 20 grossing concert shows of the year 1987 in the US, and at the end of 1987 it was estimated that the entire tour grossed more than $50 million.[51] In 1991, it was estimated that each show of the tour grossed US$1 million,[52] for roughly $86 million over the course of the tour (or approximately $185 million today, adjusted for inflation).[23]

The European leg of the tour seemed to garner mostly unfavorable reviews from the media,[2][53] although there were positive reviews as well.[1][24] Bowie was frustrated how the reviews in Europe changed from initially positive to negative, blaming the early start of the tour in some outdoor venues for the poor reception. He said, "the biggest mistake that was made on that tour, was opening in the daylight. The whole reason for the entire damn show was lost." He noted that reviews from indoor shows (where the set and lighting were more effective) were quite positive.[54]

"I think it's [The Glass Spider Tour] something that's very unique, and I think you either love it, or it's not your cup of tea."[1]

—Peter Frampton, August 1987

The US media seemed kinder, with papers in Orlando, Florida and Boston, Massachusetts writing positive reviews.[6][14]The Philadelphia Inquirer and Chicago Tribune were both mixed in their reviews of shows in Philadelphia and Chicago, respectively.[33][55] The review of Bowie's first show in New York was mostly negative, calling the show "spectacular", but adding that "overkill reigns" and lamenting "a dizzying overload of visual activity."[21] A review in the Christian Science Monitor was mostly positive, highlighting the dazzling visuals and complaining that the dancing was only occasionally inspired.[4] A local paper in Portland, Oregon had a positive review that said that the dancers, music, set and band combined into an "overall effect [that] could rightly be called spectacular. It is performance art and rock opera; it is a stunning assemblage worthy of any stage or arena in the world."[18]

Despite criticism in the press, Bowie at the time said that performing on this tour was the most fun he had ever had on the road because it was the "most inventive" tour he had ever been involved with.[56]

Despite stating during the press tour that there would be no live album from the tour,[5] the performances at Sydney Entertainment Centre – Sydney on 7 and 9 November 1987 were filmed and released on video as Glass Spider in 1988. An edit of this show was subsequently aired in the US in an ABC TV concert special, ABC's first concert special since airing Elvis Presley's Aloha from Hawaii in 1973.[50] A 2007 DVD re-release of the show included an audio recording of the performance at the Olympic Stadium, Montreal on 30 August 1987. The 6 June 1987 Platz der Republik (Reichstag – City Of Berlin Festival) performance was broadcast live on FM Radio.

One critic found that the 1988 (and 2007 DVD reissue) video release rendered the intended meaning of the show largely nonsensical, as several songs and vignettes that made the show's message explicit were excised from the release.[9] However Bowie biographer Nicholas Pegg said that the concert film was "hugely enjoyable" despite the show's flaws, and that the video "leads the field for those wishing to see David Bowie delivering a rock-theatre spectacular."[40]

Bowie agreed to what at the time was considered a controversial[57] commercial sponsorship agreement with PepsiCo,[14][58] which was later seen as helping to pave the way for other big money tours by other artists.[59] For his part, Bowie recorded a TV commercial with Tina Turner to the tune "Modern Love" in May 1987 while he was preparing for the tour.[27] The commercial had a short run, as Pepsi withdrew the commercial after Bowie was accused of sexual assault during the tour.[60] Of the sponsorship agreement, Bowie said, "We did a commercial sponsorship thing only for North America with the Pepsi-Cola company. As far as I'm concerned, what it's allowed me to do, having them underwrite the tour, is to be able to produce a far more extravagant show than if I were just doing it myself. It means that instead of just having 1 or 2 sets I can have 3 or 4 sets made, and they can travel independently and they can be far more complicated."[61]

Bowie had originally planned to take the Glass Spider Tour to Russia, albeit with the band only (no dancers or elaborate props), but with the money and extra stage provided by the sponsorship, Bowie felt he could take the full tour to Russia and South America. However, these plans failed to come to fruition, and the tour never reached those regions.[62]

Bowie found himself under great stress during the tour, and after the tour ended in New Zealand, he reportedly had one of the Spider sets burned, saying "It was so great ... We just put the thing in a field and set light to it. That was such a relief!"[63] In 2016, road manager Peter Grumley claimed to have purchased and stored at least one of the (unburned) sets in his West Auckland warehouse.[64]

The entire tour was so physically demanding and such a large production that Bowie said at the time that "I don't think I'll ever take a tour quite this elaborate out on the road again. It's a real headache to put it together".[56]

Bowie became engaged to Melissa Hurley,[65] one of the dancers from the tour, but the two split up without being wed after four years.[66]

"[The Glass Spider Tour] was the first time I'd had the opportunity to spend that kind of money and do shows like that! The first time since Diamond Dogs, anyway ... I thought, Right! Let's really spend some money! I had all these thwarted dreams of what I'd tried to do with rock 'n roll in the early '70s, and I was trying to do all that a bit late."

Critics have often compared later David Bowie tours to this one,[29][53][66][67] commonly echoing this later review: "[Bowie] mounted a stadium-sized production combining the excitement of rock with the perils of Broadway. ... An incredible spectacle, but the effect was overwhelming. Each additional theatrical device served to distract, ultimately flattening the impact of the music."[68]

In 1989 while working with Tin Machine, Bowie said "I overstretched. ... There was too much responsibility on the last [Glass Spider] tour. I was under stress every single day. It was a decision a second. It was so big and so unwieldy and everybody had a problem all the time, every day, and I was under so much pressure. It was unbelievable. ... I put too many fine details into something that was going to be seen (indicates tiny figure with his finger and thumb) this big."[63]

In 1990, while giving interviews for his Sound+Vision Tour, Bowie said that he was pleased that the tour was regarded as "innovative", noting reviews that pointed out how the tour had "areas of it that surely would change the way rock was done."[54]

In 1991, while preparing for his second tour with Tin Machine, Bowie reflected on the Glass Spider Tour's theatrics and presentation, suggesting that many tours and acts that followed benefited from this tour:

The Stones' show, Prince's show, Madonna's show... all of them have benefited from [this] tour. ... I like lots of it [the Glass Spider Tour], but ... the whole thing should have been a lot smaller. Three-quarters of it was really innovative, and I've seen a lot of it in other people's shows. ... One day, if you get the chance, get a copy of that show on video and take another look at it, because in the light of what's been done since, there's some interesting shit going on.[39]

In the late 2000s, the tour began to be re-examined by critics, and the tone of the coverage began to change. In 2009, an article in the BBC News singled out the Glass Spider Tour's innovative set and marriage of music and theatre as an inspiration to later acts, including Britney Spears, Madonna, U2 and others. Stage designerWillie Williams said the Glass Spider Tour was a template for those acts: "There will be one set of costumes and they will do a few songs, then there will be another big scene change and move on to the next thing. Bowie crossing rock 'n' roll with Broadway [in the Glass Spider Tour] was where that began."[69] In 2010, the Glass Spider Tour won an award for being one of the best concert designs of all time (alongside other such notable tours as U2's 360° Tour [2009–2011] and Pink Floyd's Division Bell Tour [1994]).[17]

"When we [toured for] Young Americans, they booed the hell out of that. Why? They [the fans] wanted Diamond Dogs [Bowie's previous album]. When we did "Serious Moonlight", they booed the hell out of that because they wanted the 70s stuff. When we did "Glass Spider", they wanted "Serious Moonlight". The audience was never going to catch up to the man."

—Carlos Alomar (2016), on the fans' and critics' mixed reaction to the Glass Spider Tour[70]

In 2013, new critical reviews began to take note of some of the tour's strengths and innovations and proposed that the tour was better than its reputation suggested. Although critics still found some elements of the tour questionable (including the set itself and the prevalence of Bowie's newer material), the tour was praised for Bowie's strong voice, musical arrangements and choice of relatively unheard "jewels" in the set list.[59][71] Peter Frampton credited his participation in this tour for helping to revive his own career.[72]

The show on 6 June 1987 was played close to the Berlin Wall. The show was heard by thousands of East German citizens across the wall[73] and was followed by violent rioting in East Berlin. According to Tobias Ruther, these protests in East Berlin were the first in the sequence of riots that led to those around the time of the fall of the wall in November 1989.[74][75] Although other factors were probably more influential in the fall of the wall,[73] on Bowie's death in 2016, the German Foreign Office tweeted "Good-bye, David Bowie. You are now among #Heroes. Thank you for helping to bring down the #wall."[76]

Ultimately, given the negative reaction to the Never Let Me Down album and this tour, Bowie found himself creatively exhausted and in low critical standing.[77] Bowie decided to return to making music for himself,[78] and, having been put in touch with Reeves Gabrels through his publicist for the Glass Spider Tour,[79] Bowie formed his band Tin Machine in 1989[59] and retired his back catalogue of songs from live performance with his Sound+Vision Tour in 1990.[80]

Peter Frampton played two natural-finish maple body Pensa-Suhr Strat types, hand-made by New York-based John Suhr. For the song "Zeroes", he used a Coral electric sitar, given to him in the late 70s and previously owned by Jimi Hendrix. Carlos Alomar played on six Kramer American series guitars and one custom Alembic. Multi-instrumentalist Erdal Kizilcay played Yamaha DX7, Emax, Korg SGI and Yamaha CS70 keyboards. He also played a Tokai Stratocaster, a Yamaha GS1000 bass and a Pedulla fretless bass. Additional instruments played included a set of Latin Percussion timbales and white congas, a cowbell, 6- and 8-inch Zildjian cymbals, Promark drum sticks, a Simmons SDS-9, a cornet and a 17th-century Italian viola. Richard Cottle played on two Prophet 5s, an Oberheim, a Yamaha DX7, DX7-IID and KX5 keyboards as well as a Selmer alto saxophone. Carmine Rojas used two Spector basses, and Alan Childs played on Tama Artstar II drums.[15]

1.
David Bowie
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David Robert Jones, known professionally as David Bowie, was an English singer, songwriter and actor. He was a figure in music for over five decades, regarded by critics and musicians as an innovator. His career was marked by reinvention and visual presentation, his music, during his lifetime, his record sales, estimated at 140 million worldwide, made him one of the worlds best-selling music artists. In the UK, he was awarded nine platinum album certifications, eleven gold and eight silver, in the US, he received five platinum and seven gold certifications. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, born in Brixton, South London, Bowie developed an interest in music as a child, eventually studying art, music and design before embarking on a professional career as a musician in 1963. Space Oddity became his first top-five entry on the UK Singles Chart after its release in July 1969, after a period of experimentation, he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era with his flamboyant and androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust. The character was spearheaded by the success of his single Starman and album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, in 1976, Bowie starred in the cult film The Man Who Fell to Earth and released Station to Station. Heroes and Lodger followed, each reached the UK top five. He then reached his peak in 1983 with Lets Dance. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Bowie continued to experiment with styles, including industrial. He stopped concert touring after 2004, and his last live performance was at a charity event in 2006, in 2013, Bowie returned from a decade-long recording hiatus with the release of The Next Day. He remained musically active until he died of cancer two days after the release of his final album, Blackstar. David Robert Jones was born on 8 January 1947, in Brixton, south London and his mother, Margaret Mary Peggy, was born in Kent, and had Irish ancestry, she worked as a waitress. His father, Haywood Stenton John Jones, from Yorkshire, was an officer for the childrens charity Barnardos. The family lived at 40 Stansfield Road, near the border of the south London areas of Brixton, Bowie attended Stockwell Infants School until he was six years old, acquiring a reputation as a gifted and single-minded child—and a defiant brawler. In 1953, Bowie moved with his family to the suburb of Bromley and his voice was considered adequate by the school choir, and he demonstrated above-average abilities in playing the recorder. Upon listening to Little Richards song Tutti Frutti, Bowie would later say, presleys impact on him was likewise emphatic, I saw a cousin of mine dance to. Hound Dog and I had never seen her get up and be moved so much by anything and it really impressed me, the power of the music

2.
Never Let Me Down
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Never Let Me Down is the seventeenth studio album by David Bowie, released on 20 April 1987 on the label EMI America. Bowie conceived the album as the foundation for a world tour. He considered the record a return to rock and roll music, three singles were released from the album, Day-In Day-Out, Time Will Crawl and Never Let Me Down, which all reached the UK Top 40. Despite its commercial success, this album was received by fans and critics. In support of album, Bowie embarked on the Glass Spider Tour. The tour, like the album it supported, was commercially successful, Bowie did not release another solo album until Black Tie White Noise in 1993. As a result, Bowie said he wanted to return to recording with a rock group like he had early in his career. Bowie felt that the sound and style of his new album was reminiscent of his album Scary Monsters and was less like its immediate predecessors, Bowie spent the middle of 1986 in his home in Switzerland writing the songs with his friend Iggy Pop. Bowie wrote Never Let Me Down with the intention of performing the songs in a theatrical show and he then recorded a few demos with Erdal Kızılçay before working on the album with the full band. For the first time since his Scary Monsters album, Bowie played instruments on the record in addition to singing, for some tracks on the album, Bowie played keyboards, synthesizer, rhythm guitar and on two of the albums tracks, he played lead guitar. The album took three months to write and record, Bowie wrote the albums lead track Day-In Day-Out because of his concern about the treatment of the homeless in the US, and he wanted to make a statement about it. Some networks banned the video, which Bowie found ludicrous. This track was also the single for the album. Bowie said his vocals on this song owed a lot to Neil Young, Bowie performed the song for the BBC show Top of the Pops, although that performance has never been aired. This track was the single released from the album. The title track, Never Let Me Down, is about Bowies long-time personal assistant, Bowie wrote the song as a direct reference to his relationship with Coco as a counterpoint to the rest of the songs on the album, which he felt were mostly allegorical. The song was the last one written for the album, written, Bowie attributed his vocal performance on this track to John Lennon. Bowies performance of song for the Top of the Pops was shown on the first airing of the US version of the show

3.
Serious Moonlight Tour
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The David Bowie Serious Moonlight Tour was Bowies longest, largest and most successful concert tour. The tour opened at the Vorst Forest Nationaal, Brussels, on 18 May 1983 and ended in the Hong Kong Coliseum on 8 December 1983,15 countries visited,96 performances, the tour garnered mostly favorable reviews from the press. The largest crowd for a show during the tour was 80,000 in Auckland, New Zealand. The tour sold out at every venue it played, Bowie himself had a hand in the set design for the tour, which included giant columns as well as a large moon and a giant hand. The stage was given a vertical feeling and an overall design that Bowie called a combination of classicism and modernism. The weight of one set was 32 tons, stevie Ray Vaughan, who had contributed guitar solos to six of the songs on Lets Dance and who was up and coming, was to join the tour, also to please the American audience. Vaughan showed up for rehearsals in Dallas in April, but Vaughan showed up with a habit, a hard-partying wife. Vaughan was replaced by longtime Bowie guitarist Earl Slick, Bowie and Carlos Alomar selected an initial list of songs for the tour,35 of which they rehearsed for the tour. One song that was on the song list that never actually got to the rehearsal stage was Across the Universe. Initially the band rehearsed in a studio in Manhattan before moving near Dallas for dress rehearsals, each band member wore a costume which was designed down to the smallest detail. Two sets of each persons costumes were made and worn on alternate nights, the bands costumes were a nod, a slight parody, on all the New Romantic bands that were growing in popularity at the time. To counteract counterfeiting, tickets and backstage passes were printed with small flaws that casual observers would not notice, on 30 June 1983 the performance at the Hammersmith Odeon in London was a charity show for the Brixton Neighbourhood Community Association in the presence of Princess Michael of Kent. The 13 July 1983 Montreal Forum performance was recorded and broadcast on American FM Radio, the concert on 12 September in Vancouver was recorded for the concert video Serious Moonlight, that was released in 1984 and on DVD in 2006. Mick had only asked to play the day before, and he later recalled. I had heard Slick play solos all night so I decided not to play solos and I just went out, I really thrashed the guitar, I was waving the guitar above my head and all sorts of things. It was funny afterwards because David said, You should have seen face, I had his prize guitar and I was swinging it around my head and Slicks going Waaaa. watch my guitar, you know. I was banging into it and it was going round my head, I mean, I didnt know it was his special guitar, I just thought it was a guitar, a lump of wood with six strings. The last show of the tour was the anniversary of John Lennons death

4.
Sound+Vision Tour
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David Bowies 1990 Sound+Vision Tour was billed as a greatest hits tour in which Bowie would retire his back catalogue of hit songs from live performance. The concert tour surpassed Bowies previous Serious Moonlight and Glass Spider tours statistics by visiting 27 countries with 108 performances, Édouard Lock of La La La Human Steps co-conceived and was artistic director for this tour. Bowies previous Glass Spider Tour and two most recent albums had all been dismissed, and Bowie was looking for a way to rejuvenate himself artistically. To this end, Bowie wanted to avoid having to play his old hits live forever and it was stated that Bowie would never perform these greatest hits on tour again. Bowie said knowing I wont ever have those songs to rely on again spurs me to keep doing new things, which is good for an artist. Its so easy to kind of going on and saying, well, you can rely on those songs, you can rely on that to have a career or something. He would state in another interview that I want to finish off that old phase. By the time Im in my forties, I will have built up a whole new repertoire. It has been noted that Bowie is famous for claiming retirement in the past, so many critics, Bowie spent the early few months of 1990 preparing for the tour in a rehearsal hall on Manhattans west side. It was announced that the set-list for any performance of the tour would be partially determined by the most popular titles logged in a telephone poll by calling the number 1-900-2-BOWIE-90. Mail-in ballots were available to vote by in territories where telephone technology was not available. The first shows of the held in March 1990 in Canada were performed before any telephone polls were completed. In the US, the songs Fame, Lets Dance and Changes topped the list of songs requested by fans, while in Europe the songs Heroes and Blue Jean were the leaders. The NME, in response to the poll, ran a spoof campaign, Just Say Gnome. Bowie had considered playing The Laughing Gnome in the style of The Velvets or something until he found out the voting had been perpetrated by the music magazine, Édouard Lock co-conceived and was artistic director for this tour. Bowie had originally wanted La La La Human Steps to be involved in his previous Glass Spider Tour, given the unfavorable attention that his previous solo tour drew, Bowie was keen to make sure the Sound+Vision Tour did things differently. He added that this tour is nowhere near as ambitious as Glass Spider in size, in addition to the stark lighting and the backing 4-piece rock band, Bowie employed a new tool for this tour, a giant sixty-by-forty foot transparent gauze scrim. The scrim would occasionally be lowered in front of or behind Bowie, onto which images of Bowie, Bowie described it as being like a giant Javanese shadow puppet show at times

5.
Tin Machine
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Tin Machine were an Anglo-American hard rock band formed in 1988, notable for being fronted by English singer-songwriter David Bowie. The band consisted of Bowie on lead vocals and guitar, Reeves Gabrels on guitar, Tony Fox Sales on bass, guitarist Kevin Armstrong was an unofficial fifth member of the band, playing on both the first studio album and first tour. The band recorded two albums before dissolving in 1992, when Bowie returned to his solo career. Over the course of their career, the band sold two million albums, Bowie would later credit his time with Tin Machine as instrumental in revitalising his career in the 1990s. The Never Let Me Down album and subsequent Glass Spider Tour had left critics unimpressed, Bowie and Gabrels met through Gabrels wife Sarah, who was part of the press staff for the North American leg of Bowies 1987 Glass Spider world tour. She had given Bowie a tape of Reeves guitar playing, and after listening to the tape, Bowie told fellow band-member Gabrels that he felt he had lost his vision and wanted to be in the band to get it back. The first fruits of this came with a new version of Bowie’s 1979 song Look Back in Anger, Tony recalled that Bowie was thinking about getting a band together — something together. He didnt know exactly what he wanted to do, but he wanted Hunt and I to meet Reeves and maybe we could all write together, come up with something. Bowie himself was surprised with how things came together with the band, saying, and as we were getting together, it wasnt really occurring to me that this is what I wanted to do. It took a week or so of actually being in the studio and working, I was quite happy to go off and make a solo album. I was quite excited about a couple of things I was doing, which I brought into the band, but thats the nature of the band. Bowie was pleased that the band members clicked, calling the ease at which the personalities came together inspired guesswork, Hunt and Tony, the two sons of comic Soupy Sales, kept the mood jovial during recording sessions and interviews. Bowie later rejected the idea that Reeves, Hunt and Tony were backing members of his band, the Sales brothers would never accept having another boss. They are far too stubborn and aware of their own needs, theyre not in the market to be anybodys backing band, either of them. You do not fuck with the Sales brothers, or Reeves Gabrels, Gabrels said that Bowie came in one day while the group was first forming and said, I think this has got to be a band. You guys dont listen to me anyway, the band split profits four ways, no one was on a salary and each member paid for his own expenses. Bowie also clarified that the band will cease to exist the moment it ceases to be an experience for any of us. None of us wanted to get into the kind of situation where you find yourself making albums because youre contracted to

6.
Concert tour
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A concert is a live music performance in front of an audience. A recital is a concert by a soloist or small group which follows a program, a recitalist is a musician who gives frequent recitals. The invention of the piano recital has been attributed to Franz Liszt. The performance may be by a musician, sometimes then called a recital, or by a musical ensemble, such as an orchestra, choir. Indoor concerts held in the largest venues are sometimes called arena concerts or amphitheatre concerts, informal names for a concert include show and gig. Regardless of the venue, musicians perform on a stage. Concerts often require live event support with professional audio equipment, before recorded music, concerts provided the main opportunity to hear musicians play. The nature of a concert varies by musical genre, individual performers, concerts by a small jazz combo or small bluegrass band may have the same order of program, mood, and volume—but vary in music and dress. In a similar way, a musician, band, or genre of music might attract concert attendees with similar dress, hairstyle. For example, concert goers in the 1960s often had hair, sandals. Regular attendees to a concert venue might also have a style that comprises that venues scene. Other Types of concerts, To plan or arrange by mutual agreement, some performers or groups put on very elaborate and expensive shows. To create a memorable and exciting atmosphere and increase the spectacle, some singers, especially popular music, augment concert sound with pre-recorded accompaniment, back-up dancers, and even broadcast vocal tracks of the singers own voice. Activities during these concerts can include dancing, sing-alongs, and moshing, concerts involving a greater number of artists, especially those that last for multiple days, are known as festivals. Unlike other concerts, which remain in a single genre of music or work of a particular artist, festivals often cover a broad scope of music. Due to their size, festivals are almost exclusively held outdoors, new platforms for festivals are becoming increasingly popular such as Jam Cruise, which is a festival held on a cruise ship, as well as Mayan Holidaze, which is a destination festival held in Tulum. Often concert tours are named, to differentiate different tours by the same artist, different segments of longer concert tours are known as legs. In the largest concert tours it is becoming common for different legs to employ separate touring production crews and equipment

7.
Peter Frampton
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Peter Kenneth Frampton is an English-American rock musician, singer, songwriter, producer, and guitarist. He was previously associated with the bands Humble Pie and The Herd, 1972-1976 Framptons Camel which at the end of his group career was Framptons international breakthrough album his live release, Frampton Comes Alive. The album sold more than eight million copies in the United States alone, since then he has released several major albums. He has also worked with David Bowie and both Matt Cameron and Mike McCready from Pearl Jam, among others. Frampton is best known for hits as Breaking All the Rules, Show Me the Way, Baby, I Love Your Way, Do You Feel Like We Do, and Im in You. He has also appeared as himself in shows such as The Simpsons. Frampton is known for his work as a player and particularly with a Talkbox. Peter Kenneth Frampton was born in Bromley, UK and he attended Bromley Technical High School, at which his father, Owen Frampton, was a teacher and the head of the Art department. He first became interested in music when he was seven years old, upon discovering his grandmothers banjolele in the attic, he taught himself to play, and later taught himself to play guitar and piano as well. At age eight he started taking music lessons. Early influences were Cliff Richard & the Shadows and American rockers Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran, and then The Ventures, Jimi Hendrix and his father introduced him to the recordings of Belgian gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. By the age of 12, Frampton played in a band called The Little Ravens, both he and David Bowie, who was three years older, were pupils at Bromley Technical School. The Little Ravens played on the bill at school as Bowies band, George. Peter and David would spend time together at lunch breaks, playing Buddy Holly songs, at the age of 14, Peter was playing with a band called The Trubeats followed by a band called The Preachers, produced and managed by Bill Wyman of The Rolling Stones. He became a child singer, and in 1966 he became a member of The Herd. He was the lead guitarist and singer, scoring several British pop hits, Frampton was named The Face of 1968 by teen magazine Rave. In 1968, when Frampton was 18 years old, he joined with Steve Marriott of Small Faces to form Humble Pie, during the Harrison session, pedal steel player Pete Drake introduced him to the talk box that was to become one of his trademark guitar effects. After four studio albums and one album with Humble Pie, Frampton left the band and went solo in 1971

8.
Glass Spider
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Glass Spider is a concert video by David Bowie, recorded during the 1987 Glass Spider Tour at Sydney Entertainment Centre in support of his album Never Let Me Down. The video was released in 1988 on VHS,1999 on DVD, the Glass Spider Tour was a worldwide concert tour launched in May 1987 in support of Bowies album Never Let Me Down. The tour was attended and profitable, but was poorly received by contemporary critics. The tour and concert film were named after the track Glass Spider from the album, the film was released on VHS in 1988 and is a recording of nearly two hours of performances from the tour recorded in Sydney, Australia in November 1987. The concert features dance choreography by Toni Basil and Peter Frampton on guitar, charlie Sexton makes a guest appearance on vocals and guitar. In some regions, it was released on two cassettes of 10 songs each until a 1990 compilation combined them into a single release. The running time of the VHS is approximately 110 minutes, in 1999 a semi-official DVD of the show was released in Far East regions only. A 1-hour edit from the release was aired on US prime-time television in early June 1988 on American Broadcasting Company-affiliated stations. This was the first ABC concert special since 1973s Aloha from Hawaii starring Elvis Presley, the video was reissued in 2007 on DVD. The 2007 re-release was originally planned to include a recording of the song Glass Spider recorded in Vienna on 1 July 1987. The DVD includes Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS5.1 sound and is released in the programs original 1.33,1 aspect ratio, unfortunately, an error in the sound mix on this DVD left much of Peter Framptons guitar playing scarcely audible. As a result, although the quality is superior, the original VHS or 1999 DVD remain a superior choice for audio. The home videos original 1988 release received reviews from sources such as Variety magazine, the Houston Post. The Chicago Tribune said the original 1988 video release offers all of the excitement, spectacle, the AllMusic review called the release brilliant and credited the performance with stunning live performances that are frequently on par with their studio counterparts. Some reviews were more ambivalent, such as The Boston Globes review stating simply that theres a lot to digest, the Los Angeles Times had a mostly negative review of the 1-hour ABC special, calling the show surprisingly lame and the stage silly. Another critic found that the 1-hour ABC special, which showed only a subset of the songs performed. All songs were written by David Bowie except where noted, pegg, Nicholas, The Complete David Bowie New Edition, Expanded and Updated, Titan Books,2016, ISBN9781785653650 Glass Spider at the Internet Movie Database

9.
Diamond Dogs Tour
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The Diamond Dogs Tour was a concert tour by David Bowie in North America in 1974 to promote the studio album Diamond Dogs. The end of the tour was also called The Soul Tour, two months of rehearsals were required to get the tour ready, in part due to the elaborate set & props required for the show. Originally the tour was planned to appear in a city for five nights before moving on to the next city, the tour started in June 1974 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada as the Diamond Dogs Tour. Bowie recorded radio and television commercials for the tour, which played in advance of the arrival in each city. The tour took the month of August 1974 off, during which time Bowie began recording his follow-up studio album, Young Americans. In 1987, Bowie recalled how difficult the tour was early on before changing it into the Soul Tour, saying I was in a bad state of mind to have attempted that. It was pretty exciting, but I was so blocked, so stoned during the entire thing that Im amazed I lasted with it even that one trip across America before I ditched it. The set was built to resemble a city, weighed 6 tons and was incorporated over 20,000 moving parts including a variety of props, the set was at least partially based on work by German artist George Grosz. I kept getting stuck out over the heads, on the hydraulic cherry picker, after the finish of Space Oddity. Other props worked as expected, for the song Big Brother, Bowie sang from inside a multi-mirrored glass asylum, emerging during the next song sitting in the palm of a giant hand. The show in Tampa, Florida, was performed without any of the stage props because the driver driving those components ended up in a highway ditch after being stung by a bee. The whole thing was built on a city pretext, I had dancers working with me and it was choreographed and was a real fantastic musical event. I thoroughly enjoyed working like that, mainMan, Bowies management team, planned to cull a live album from the July 1974 performances at the Tower Theater just outside Philadelphia. When the band learned of this, they demanded to be paid a standard recording fee of $5000 per musician in addition to their pay or they would refuse to perform. They were given checks hours before show time, and the recording went on as planned. A Portrait in Flesh, a bootleg of the September 5,1975 show in Los Angeles was released in Australia, two concerts were performed on 16 June in Toronto

10.
Changes (David Bowie song)
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Changes is a song by David Bowie, originally released on the album Hunky Dory in December 1971 and as a single in January 1972. Despite missing the Billboard top 40, Changes became one of Bowies best-known songs, the lyrics are often seen as a manifesto for his chameleonic personality, the frequent change of the world today, and frequent reinventions of his musical style throughout the 1970s. This single is cited as David Bowies official North American debut and this was the last song Bowie performed live on stage before his retirement from live performances at the end of 2006. The song ranked number 128 on the Rolling Stone list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and it is one of four of Bowies songs to be included in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fames 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. On 27 November 2016, the Grammy Hall of Fame announced its induction and it charted for the first time on the UK Singles Chart on 15 January 2016 at number 49 following Bowies death. Bowie has said that the track started out as a parody of a nightclub song, the musical arrangement featured the composers saxophone, Rick Wakemans keyboards and Mick Ronsons strings, while the stuttering chorus has been compared to The Who. The lyrics focused on the nature of artistic reinvention and distancing oneself from the rock mainstream. The song has also interpreted as touting Modern Kids as a New Race. The composer having agreed to Peter Noone covering Oh and you Pretty Things, which later commentators have argued was the obvious single from Hunky Dory, Changes was chosen for a 45 release in January 1972. Like the album, it generated good reviews but negligible chart action, peaking just outside the US Top 40 and failing in Britain. The song was a feature of Bowies live performances as Ziggy Stardust in 1972–73, appearing again on the Diamond Dogs tour in 1974. According to Bowie, it turned into this monster that nobody would stop asking for at concerts, I had no idea it would become such a popular thing. The song is ranked at number 127 on Rolling Stone magazines 2004 list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, in 2016, the song was ranked at number 74 by internet radio station WDDF Radio in their first top 76 of the 1970s countdown. This was broadcast in early June 1972 and eventually released on Bowie at the Beeb in 2000, a performance recorded at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on 20 October 1972 was released on Santa Monica 72 and Live Santa Monica 72. This version also appeared on the Japanese release of RarestOneBowie, the same track was issued, however, on the bonus disc of the Aladdin Sane – 30th Anniversary Edition in 2003. A live performance recorded at the Hammersmith Odeon, London, on 3 July 1973 was released on Ziggy Stardust – The Motion Picture in 1983. A live version from Bowies 1974 tour was released on David Live and this version was also released on the album Rock Concert and as a B-side of the Spanish version of the single Knock on Wood. Another live recording from the 1974 tour was released on A Portrait in Flesh, a live performance recorded on 23 March 1976 was released on Live Nassau Coliseum 76, part of the 2010 reissues of Station to Station

11.
Golden Years (song)
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Golden Years is a song written and recorded by David Bowie in 1975. It was originally released in a form as a single in November 1975. It was the first track completed during the Station to Station sessions, at one stage it was slated to be the albums title track. The latter foreshadowed the Krautrock-influenced Euro-centric and electronic music that Bowie would move into with his late-1970s Berlin Trilogy, Bowie was looking to emulate something of the glitzy nostalgia of On Broadway, which he was playing on piano in the studio when he came up with Golden Years. He has said that he offered it to Elvis Presley to perform, both Angela Bowie and Ava Cherry claim to have been the inspiration for the song. Bowie allegedly got drunk to perform the song for the American TV show Soul Train, the resultant video clip was used to promote the single, and assisted Bowies continued commercial success in the United States, where it charted for 16 weeks and reached No.10 in early-1976. It achieved No.8 in the UK and No.17 in Canada, the song was also a top ten hit in Ireland, the Netherlands and Sweden. As a digital download, it reached number four in the Hungarian singles chart in 2016, Golden Years was played sporadically by Bowie on the 1976 tour, if at all, but regularly on the 1983,1990 and 2000 tours. It appears on the 1983 concert film Serious Moonlight, the song was used as the theme song of Stephen Kings Golden Years, and in the pilot of the CBS series Swingtown. The song was used in the movie A Knights Tale starring Heath Ledger. Golden Years –3,22 Can You Hear Me and it was released as the B-side of the U. S. release of John, Im Only Dancing in December 1979. In November 1981 it appeared as the B-side of the single Wild Is the Wind and it was released as part of the RCA Records Life Time picture disc set and the Fashion Picture Disc Set. Single version appeared on The Best of Bowie, The Best of David Bowie 1974/1979, Best of Bowie, The Platinum Collection, Nothing Has Changed and it is also included on Re, Call 2, part of the Who Can I Be Now. The song was included on the album Trainspotting #2, Music from the Motion Picture, the song was included on the original soundtrack of A Knights Tale, starring Heath Ledger. The original film score was written for the film by Hollywood composer Carter Burwell, one scene in the movie is a formal dance, which calls for courtly music based on Burwells love theme to segue into David Bowies song Golden Years. First, the dance had been choreographed and filmed to an arbitrary tempo which begins at a slow courtly pace. Burwell had to match that tempo and the choreography after the fact and also find some credible path from a formal and restrained dance to a joyful 70s pop tune. They obtained Bowies permission to pull tracks from his master of the song so they could mix these into Burwells arrangement

12.
Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)
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Scary Monsters, also known simply as Scary Monsters, is the fourteenth studio album by David Bowie, released on 12 September 1980 by RCA Records. It was his studio album on the label and his first following the so-called Berlin Trilogy of Low, Heroes. Though considered very significant in terms, the trilogy had proven less successful commercially. 1 in the UK and restored Bowies commercial standing in the US, aside from one cover, Tom Verlaines Kingdom Come, all tracks would be credited to Bowie alone, unlike the Berlin Trilogy where there was an increasing amount of input from his collaborators. Bruce Springsteens pianist Roy Bittan was back for his first Bowie album since Station to Station five years earlier and this would be the fifth and last Bowie album featuring the rhythm section of Dennis Davis and George Murray, which had been together since Station to Station. Bowie continued to develop songs using non-traditional methods, for Its No Game, B. B. but do it in his own way. The track I Feel Free was recorded in rough mix for the album, a few of the other tracks on the album started with different names, Ashes to Ashes began as People Are Turning to Gold and Teenage Wildlife was originally called It Happens Everyday. The track Scream Like a Baby was originally called Laser, the song Is There Life After Marriage. was fully written and recorded for the album, but for unknown reasons was never released. The publics first taste of Scary Monsters was Ashes to Ashes, built around a guitar synth theme by Chuck Hammer, it revisited the character of Major Tom from Bowies early hit Space Oddity. Aside from its critical and commercial success as a song, the music video set a benchmark for the art form. Their whitewashed look was designed to symbolise the discarding of Bowies old personae. These images were not reproduced on the Rykodisc reissue in 1992, the albums final single, Up the Hill Backwards, was released in March of that year. RCA released Scary Monsters in September 1980 with the promo line Often Copied, Never Equalled, seen as a direct reference to the New Wave acts Bowie had inspired over the years. The albums No.1 placing in the UK charts was Bowies first since Diamond Dogs in 1974, well-regarded later efforts such as Outside, Earthling, Heathen and Reality were cited as the best album since Scary Monsters. In 2000 Q magazine ranked Scary Monsters at No.30 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever, in 2002 Pitchfork Media placed it No.93 in its Top 100 Albums of the 1980s. In 2012, Slant Magazine listed the album at No, in 2013, NME ranked the album at number 381 in its list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. All songs written by David Bowie, except where noted. The album has been re-released four times to date on CD, the first being in 1984 by RCA, the second in 1992 by Rykodisc, the third in 1999 by EMI and the last in 2003 by EMI as a SACD

13.
Space Oddity
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Space Oddity is a song written and recorded by David Bowie. It was first released as a 7-inch single on 11 July 1969 and it was also the opening track of his second studio album, David Bowie. It became one of Bowies signature songs and one of four of his songs to be included in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fames 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. The song is about the launch of Major Tom, a fictional astronaut, the United States Apollo 11 mission would launch five days later and would become the first manned moon landing another five days after that. The lyrics have also seen to lampoon the British space programme. Bowie would later revisit his Major Tom character in the songs Ashes to Ashes, Hallo Spaceboy, Space Oddity was David Bowies first single to chart in the UK. It reached the top five on its release and received the 1970 Ivor Novello Special Award for Originality. His second album, originally released as David Bowie in the UK, was renamed after the track for its 1972 re-release by RCA Records, in 1975, upon re-release as part of a maxi-single, the song became Bowies first UK No.1 single. In January 2016, the song re-entered singles charts around the world following Bowies death, the song also ranked as third on iTunes on January 12,2016. Three primary studio versions of Space Oddity exist, a version recorded in February 1969, the album version recorded that June. The early version of Space Oddity was recorded on 2 February 1969 for Bowies promotional film Love You Till Tuesday and this recording became commercially available in 1984, on a belated VHS release of the film and accompanying soundtrack album. It also appeared on the compilation album The Deram Anthology 1966–1968, in June 1969, after Bowies split from record label Deram, his manager, Kenneth Pitt, negotiated a one-album deal with Mercury Records and its UK subsidiary, Philips. Mercury executives had heard a tape that included a demo of Space Oddity, recorded by Bowie. Next Bowie tried to find a producer, visconti decided to delegate its production to Gus Dudgeon. Differing edits of the album version were released as singles in the UK, the song was promoted in advertisements for the Stylophone, played by Bowie on the record and heard in the background during the opening verse. The single was not played by the BBC until after the Apollo 11 crew had returned, after this slow start. In the US, it stalled at 124, on 2 October 1969, he performed the song for an episode of Top of the Pops. However, this was recorded separate from the main audience, the performance was shown on 9 October the following week, and repeated on 16 October

14.
David Bowie (1969 album)
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David Bowie is the second studio album by the English musician David Bowie, released under that title by Philips in the UK, and as Man of Words/Man of Music by Mercury in the US, on 14 November 1969. It was reissued in 1972 by RCA Records as Space Oddity, Space Oddity was the name used for CD releases of the album in 1984,1990 and 1999, but it reverted to the original, eponymous title for 2009 and 2015 reissues. Basically, David Bowie can be viewed in retrospect as all that Bowie had been, the album came about after Bowie had made the transition from a cabaret/avant-garde-inspired musician to a hippie/folk-based sound and as such the album is a major turning point from his 1967 debut. Dont Sit Down, an unlisted 40-second jam heard after the second song on the UK Philips LP, was excluded from the US Mercury release. The piece was included once again -- and listed as an independent track -- on CD releases of the album in the 1990s, the 2009 and 2015 reissues returned the piece to its original status as a hidden track. Released as a single in July 1969, Space Oddity was an acoustic number augmented by the eerie tones of the composers Stylophone. The title and subject matter were inspired by Stanley Kubricks 2001, A Space Odyssey, the song dates back as early as February 1969. It was written for a video named Love You till Tuesday. The videos intent was to sell Bowie to a new label as he had dropped from Deram Records in April 1968. He was urged by his manager Kenneth Pitt to record new material. His 1980 hit Ashes to Ashes declared We know Major Toms a junkie, unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed reflected a strong Bob Dylan influence, with its harmonica, edgy guitar sound and snarling vocal. God Knows Im Good, Bowies observational tale of a shoplifters plight, cygnet Committee has been called Bowies first true masterpiece. Bowie himself described it at the time as a put down of hippies who seemed ready to follow any charismatic leader, memory of a Free Festival was Bowies reminiscence of an arts festival he had organised in August 1969. Its drawn-out fade/chorus was compared to The Beatles Hey Jude, the song has also interpreted as a derisive comment on the counterculture it was ostensibly celebrating. The background vocals for the finale featured Bob Harris, his wife Sue, Tony Woollcott. Before recording for the album commenced at Trident Studios, the song Space Oddity had been selected as the single based on an earlier demo. Visconti saw it as a novelty record and passed the responsibility for the song on to Gus Dudgeon. However, Visconti produced all the songs on the album

15.
"Heroes" (David Bowie album)
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Heroes is the twelfth studio album by English musician David Bowie, released on RCA Records on 14 October 1977. Of the three albums, it was the only one recorded in Berlin. Upon its release, it was met with critical reception and was named NME Album of the Year. The title track one of Bowies best known and acclaimed songs. The album was included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, recorded at Hansa Tonstudio in what was then West Berlin, Heroes reflected the zeitgeist of the Cold War, symbolised by the divided city. Co-producer Tony Visconti considered it one of my last great adventures in making albums, the studio was about 500 yards from the Berlin Wall. Red Guards would look into our control-room window with powerful binoculars,75 by the German band Neu. – whose guitarist Michael Rother had originally been approached to play on the album – while V-2 Schneider is inspired by and named after Kraftwerks Florian Schneider. The cover photo by Masayoshi Sukita was inspired by German artist Erich Heckels Roquairol, brian Eno instigated Robert Fripps involvement by telephoning him in New York and inviting him to play guitar on the album. Fripp had considered himself retired from music but said, Well, upon arriving at the studio from New York, and suffering from jet lag, Fripp recorded a guitar part for the track Beauty and the Beast, this first take was used in the songs final mix. The lyrics for Joe the Lion, written and recorded at the microphone in less than an hour according to Visconti, RCA Records marketed Heroes with the slogan Theres Old Wave. It enjoyed a critical reception on release in late 1977, Melody Maker. It reached No.3 in the UK and stayed in the charts for 26 weeks, the album was released in Germany with the title track renamed Heroes/Helden and partly in German. An early instance of the enduring influence is John Lennons comment in 1980 that. Several songs from the album were played live on Bowies Low and Heroes World Tour of 1978, philip Glass adapted a classical suite, Heroes Symphony, from this album as a companion to his earlier Low Symphony. Several tracks were used in the film Christiane F. Bowie performed as himself in the film, the cover of Bowies 2013 album, The Next Day, is an altered and obscured version of the Heroes cover. This version has Heroes crossed out and Bowies face obscured by a white box reading The Next Day. All lyrics written by David Bowie, all composed by Bowie. Heroes has been rereleased on CD four times, the first CD issue was by RCA in 1984

16.
Let's Dance (David Bowie album)
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Lets Dance is the fifteenth studio album by David Bowie. It was originally released in April 1983, three years after his previous album, Scary Monsters, China Girl was a new version of a song which Bowie had co-written with Iggy Pop for the latters 1977 album The Idiot. It also contains a version of the song Cat People. Lets Dance was nominated for the Album of the Year Grammy Award in 1984 and it has sold 10.7 million copies worldwide, making it Bowies best-selling album. It is Bowies eighteenth official album release since his debut in 1967, at one point Bowie described the album as a rediscovery of white-English-ex-art-school-student-meets-black-American-funk, a refocusing of Young Americans. Lets Dance was also a stone for the career of the Texas blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan. The album was released as a limited picture disc in 1983. Critical reviews for Lets Dance as an album have been mixed, Bowie would form the hard rock and grunge-predecessor band Tin Machine in 1989 in an effort to rejuvenate himself artistically. David Bowie had planned to use producer Tony Visconti on the album, however, he chose Nile Rodgers for the project, a move that came as a surprise to Visconti, who had set time aside to work on Lets Dance. Visconti called Coco and she said, Well, you might as well know – hes been in the studio for the past two weeks with someone else and its working out well and we wont be needing you. The move damaged the two mens relationship and Visconti did not work with Bowie again for nearly 20 years, Rodgers later recalled that Bowie approached him to produce his album so that Bowie could have hit singles. The albums influences were described as Louis Jordan, Southside Johnny, Bowie spent three days making demos for the album in New York before cutting the album, a rarity for Bowie who, for the previous few albums, usually showed up with little more than a few ideas. Despite this, the album was recorded, start to finish, including mixing, in 17 days, Stevie Ray Vaughan met Bowie at the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. After Vaughans performance, Bowie was so impressed with the guitarist he later said completely floored me, I probably hadnt been so gung-ho about a guitar player since seeing Jeff Beck with his band the Tridents. Of Bowie, Vaughan said, to tell you the truth, David and I talked for hours and hours about our music, about funky Texas blues and its roots – I was amazed at how interested he was. At Montreux, he said something about being in touch and then tracked me down in California, in a contemporary interview, Vaughan described the recording sessions for the album, David Bowie is real easy to work with. He knows what hes doing in the studio and he doesnt mess around and he comes right in and goes to work. Most of the time, David did the vocals and then I played my parts, a lot of the time, he just wanted me to cut loose

17.
Tonight (David Bowie album)
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Tonight is the sixteenth studio album by David Bowie. It was originally released in September 1984, on the label EMI America and it followed his most commercially successful album, Lets Dance. He described the album, released immediately after his previous albums tour wrapped up, as an effort to keep my hand in, so to speak, David Bowie worked on Tonight after finishing up his Serious Moonlight Tour in support of his previous album Lets Dance. He did not have much luck writing while on tour, so he described the process of recording the album Tonight this way, It was rushed. The process wasnt rushed, we took our time recording the thing. I like to work fast in the studio, there wasnt much of my writing on it cause I cant write on tour and I hadnt assembled anything to put out. But I thought it a kind of violent effort at a kind of Pin Ups, Bowie brought in Derek Bramble and Hugh Padgham to produce the record, the former receiving the nod from Bowie due to some of the demos hed recently produced for English female singer Jaki Graham. As with Lets Dance, Bowie prepared for the album by recording some demos beforehand and this surprised collaborator Carlos Alomar, who said it was the first time in the eleven years that Ive been with the damn man that hes brought in anything. Iggy Pop spent a deal of time in the studio with Bowie. Theres a lot more there than is reflected in just the simple co-writing credit for two songs and some of the old stuff. When asked why Bowie included so much Pop-written material on the album, I think he just wanted the songs heard more, a sentiment Bowie would mirror when covering Pops Bang Bang on his next album, Never Let Me Down. Some of the tracks were not yet named, but they were numbered, called simply 1,2 and 3. 1 would turn into the album track Loving the Alien. Bowie described Loving the Alien as a very personal bit of writing that he did not feel fit in with the rest of the album because it is such a dark song amidst lighter fare. He said, Alien came about because of my feeling that so much history is wrong - as is being rediscovered all the time - and that we base so much on the wrong knowledge that weve gleaned. Bowie cut the demo for the song in Montreux, Switzerland, with a guitarist, demo songs 2 and 3 were not finished for the album, much to Padghams regret. He said, They were really just jams, David had some riffs on a tape, in his head, and the band would jam on them and wed make a bit of a song out of it. But they were quite raunchy songs, at one point, David asked me what my least favourite song out of the eleven or twelve we had was, and I said Blue Jean

18.
Madison Square Garden
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Madison Square Garden, often called MSG or simply The Garden, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the New York City borough of Manhattan. Located in Midtown Manhattan between 7th and 8th Avenues from 31st to 33rd Streets, it is situated atop Pennsylvania Station. The Garden is used for basketball and ice hockey, as well as boxing, concerts, ice shows, circuses, professional wrestling and other forms of sports. It is close to other midtown Manhattan landmarks, including the Empire State Building, Koreatown and it is home to the New York Rangers of the National Hockey League, the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association, and residency to singer-songwriter Billy Joel. The Garden opened on February 11,1968, and is the oldest major sporting facility in the New York metropolitan area and it is the oldest arena in the National Hockey League and the second-oldest arena in the National Basketball Association. MSG is the fourth-busiest music arena in the world in terms of sales, behind The O2 Arena. At a total construction cost of approximately $1.1 billion and it is part of the Pennsylvania Plaza office and retail complex. Several other operating entities related to the Garden share its name, Madison Square is formed by the intersection of 5th Avenue and Broadway at 23rd Street in Manhattan. It was named after James Madison, fourth President of the United States, two venues called Madison Square Garden were located just northeast of the square, the first from 1879 to 1890, and the second from 1890 to 1925. The first Garden, leased to P. T. Barnum, had no roof and was inconvenient to use during inclement weather, Madison Square Garden II was designed by noted architect Stanford White. The new building was built by a syndicate which included J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, P. T. Barnum, Darius Mills, James Stillman and W. W. Astor. It was 200 feet by 485 feet, and the main hall and it had a 1, 200-seat theatre, a concert hall with a capacity of 1,500, the largest restaurant in the city and a roof garden cabaret. A third Madison Square Garden opened in a new location, on 8th Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets, from 1925 to 1968, groundbreaking on the third Madison Square Garden took place on January 9,1925. Designed by the theater architect Thomas W. Lamb, it was built at the cost of $4.75 million in 249 days by boxing promoter Tex Rickard. The arena was 200 feet by 375 feet, with seating on three levels, and a capacity of 18,496 spectators for boxing. Demolition commenced in 1968 after the opening of the current Garden and it finished up in early 1969, and the site is now where One Worldwide Plaza is located. The new structure was one of the first of its kind to be built above the platforms of a railroad station. It was an engineering feat constructed by Robert E. McKee of El Paso, public outcry over the demolition of the Pennsylvania Station structure—an outstanding example of Beaux-Arts architecture—led to the creation of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission

19.
Ahoy Rotterdam
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Ahoy Rotterdam is a convention centre and arena located in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Since opening in 1950, the centre has hosted exhibitions, concerts. The centre consists of three parts, the Beurs- & Evenementenhallen, Congres- & Vergadercentrum and Ahoy Arena. The main concert venue, the Ahoy Arena, opened on 15 January 1971, the basis of the present Ahoy was laid in 1950. After the devastation caused by the Second World War, the city of Rotterdam had worked on reconstruction, to mark the occasion, the Rotterdam Ahoy. Exhibition was held in a hall on the site where the medical faculty of the Erasmus University now stands. The exhibition hall was called the Ahoy-Hal, the apostrophe is a remnant of the original exclamation mark. The hall was used for a series of national and international events, during the North Sea flood of 1953 the hall also proved its worth as a reception centre for victims. Ahoy Rotterdam, in its current form, was built in 1970, the complex’s striking design won various national and international awards for its special steel structures. The design of the venue took inspiration from the water, with the laid out like a ship. The first event to be there was the Femina family exhibition. Since then, Ahoy has been expanded on a number of occasions, on 18,19 and 20 February 1977, Pink Floyd In the Flesh World Tour. In 1977 the progressive rock band Yes played there on their tour in support of their album Going For The One, the whole show was recorded and Parallels and Wonderous Stories were featured on the live album Yesshows. In 1978, Bob Marley and the Wailers played there, in 1979 ABBA played there as part of ABBA, The Tour. In 1980 Led Zeppelin played there as part of their Tour Over Europe 1980, in 1980 and 1988, Frank Zappa and his band played there. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed at the arena on April 28 and 29,1981 as part of the River Tour, Springsteen would perform there again with the band in 2002, in addition to performances with other lineups in 1993,2005, and 2006. From 1982 to 2007, Diana Ross performed there more than 20 times, in 1986 and 1988, Whitney Houston performed there five times in the 1980s with two world tours and 11 times in the 1990s with three world tours. In 1989 Bon Jovi performed there for his New Jersey Syndicate Tour and he returned four years later for his Keep the Faith Tour

20.
De Kuip
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Stadion Feijenoord, more commonly known by its nickname De Kuip, is a stadium in Rotterdam, Netherlands that was completed in 1937. The name is derived from the area Feijenoord in Rotterdam, the stadiums original capacity was 64,000. In 1949 it was expanded to 69,000, and in 1994 it was renovated again for a capacity of 51,117. In 1999, a significant amount of restoration and interior work took place at the prior to its use as a venue in the Euro 2000 tournament. Contemporary examples were Highbury, where the West and East stands had been built as a double deck. In fact, de Kuip acted as an example for many of the greatest stadia we know today, the stadium was co-financed by the billionaire Daniël George van Beuningen, who made his fortune in World War I, exporting coal from Germany to Britain through neutral Netherlands. In World War II, the stadium was torn down for scrap by German occupiers. After the war the stadiums capacity was expanded and stadium lights were added, on 29 October 1991 De Kuip was named as being one of Rotterdams monuments. In 1994 the stadium was renovated to its present form, It became an all seater. An extra building was constructed for use by Feyenoord, it also houses a restaurant. As of January 2007, the stadium can be found in 3D format on Google Earth, next to De Kuip and Feyenoords training ground there is another, but smaller sports arena, the Topsportcentrum Rotterdam. This arena hosts events in sports and in various levels of competition. Some examples of sports that can be seen in the topsportcentrum are judo, De Kuip is currently the home stadium of football club Feyenoord, one of the traditional top teams in the Netherlands. It has also long been one of the grounds of the Dutch national team, having hosted over 150 international matches. In 1963 De Kuip staged the final of the UEFA Cup Winners Cup, in 2000, the Feijenoord stadium hosted the final of Euro 2000, played in the Netherlands and Belgium, where France defeated Italy 2–1 in extra time. The stadium has hosted concerts since 1978, among the first performers at De Kuip were Andy Ha, Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton. David Bowie held his dress rehearsals and subsequently opened his 1987 Glass Spider Tour at the stadium, michael Jackson performed at the stadium 5 times,3 during the Bad World Tour and 2 during the Dangerous World Tour, performing to a combined crowd of 270,000. Fewer concerts have been held at this venue since the opening of Amsterdam ArenA in 1996, pink Floyd held a few concerts there as well

21.
MTV
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MTV is an American cable and satellite television channel owned by Viacom Media Networks and headquartered in New York City. Launched on August 1,1981, the originally aired music videos as guided by television personalities known as video jockeys. In its early years, MTVs main target demographic was young adults and it has received criticism towards this change of focus, both by certain segments of its audience and musicians. MTVs influence on its audience, including issues involving censorship and social activism, has also been a subject of debate for several years, in recent years, MTV had struggled with the secular decline of music-related cable media. In April 2016, MTV announced it would start to return to its original music roots with the reintroduction of the classic MTV series MTV Unplugged. It was also reported that the series MTV Cribs would be making a return on Snapchat, MTV has spawned numerous sister channels in the US and affiliated channels internationally, some of which have gone independent. As of July 2015, approximately 92,188,000 US households have received MTV, several earlier concepts for music video-based television programming had been around since the early 1960s. The Beatles had used music videos to promote their records starting in the mid-1960s, CBS rejected the idea, but Williams premiered his own musical composition Classical Gas on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, where he was head writer. The series featured clips from various popular artists, but was canceled by its distributor in 1971. The channel, which featured video disc jockeys, signed a deal with US Cable in 1978 to expand its audience from retail to cable television, the service was no longer active by the time MTV launched in 1981. The QUBE system offered many specialized channels, One of these specialized channels was Sight on Sound, a music channel that featured concert footage and music-oriented television programs. With the interactive QUBE service, viewers could vote for their favorite songs, the original programming format of MTV was created by media executive Robert W. Pittman, who later became president and chief executive officer of MTV Networks. Pittman had test-driven the music format by producing and hosting a 15-minute show, Album Tracks, the inspiration for PopClips came from a similar program on New Zealands TVNZ network named Radio with Pictures, which premiered in 1976. The concept itself had been in the works since 1966, when record companies began supplying the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation with promotional music clips to play on the air at no charge. Few artists made the trip to New Zealand to appear live. A shortened version of the shuttle launch ID ran at the top of hour in various forms. The first music video shown on MTV was The Buggles Video Killed the Radio Star and this was followed by the video for Pat Benatars You Better Run. Sporadically, the screen would go black when an employee at MTV inserted a tape into a VCR, MTVs lower third graphics that appeared near the beginning and end of music videos would eventually use the recognizable Kabel typeface for about 25 years

22.
Fashion (David Bowie song)
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Fashion is a track from David Bowies 1980 album Scary Monsters. It was released as the single from the album and was accompanied, like its predecessor Ashes to Ashes. According to co-producer Tony Visconti, Fashion was the last song completed in the Scary Monsters sessions, its bassline, guest guitarist Robert Fripp contributed a series of harsh, mechanical riffs to complement the bands funk/reggae arrangement. The track was noted for its emotionally vacant choir effect, references to a goon squad coming to town provoked theories that the song actually concerns fascism. Biographer David Buckley believed the song poked fun at the banality of the dance-floor, David Mallet shot a music video for the single Fashion in a famous nightclub owned by his friend Robert Boykin called Hurrah. The opening shot of the clip features David Bowie on the HURRAH stage which was draped in khaki canvas for this shoot. The faceted mirror walls surrounding the floor can be seen in the background of various shots. Other locations around Manhattan are intercut throughout the clip, record Mirror readers voted Fashion and Ashes to Ashes the best music videos of 1980. The video features Carlos Alomar, G. E, Fashion was the second single from Scary Monsters and the first issued after the albums September 1980 release. The edited 7 cut reached No.5 in the UK, the UK sleeve design was adapted for the cover art on the 1980 compilation Best of Bowie. Bowie has performed the song on tours, and it is included in the 1983 concert film Serious Moonlight. It was featured in the movie Clueless, during the Closing Ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics, Fashion was used during a tribute to the British fashion industry in a parade that featured a number of top models from the UK. The song was ranked among the top ten Tracks of the Year for 1980 by NME, Fashion –3,23 Scream Like a Baby –3,35 The Japanese release of the single had Its No Game as the B-side. Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics

23.
Never Let Me Down (song)
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Never Let Me Down is a song recorded by English singer David Bowie, serving as the title track for his 1987 studio album of the same name. It was released as the third and final single from the record in 1987, Never Let Me Down was written by the singer himself and Carlos Alomar, while production was handled by Bowie along with David Richards. Music critics viewed the track as one of the best on Never Let Me Down, an accompanying music video for the single was shot by French director Jean-Baptiste Mondino and similarly received positive response. Commercially, Never Let Me Down reached number 27 on the Billboard Hot 100 and it was aided by a CD release, Bowies first, and remained the singers last single to chart within the top 40 in the United States until Lazarus. He had started with his own structure for the song but wasnt happy with it, calling it ponderous. The singer described the single as a track for himself. The recording is about Bowies long-time personal assistant, Coco Schwab, Bowie described their relationship, saying, Its platonic. But there is a romance in it, I guess, inasmuch as its hard for two people to feel totally at ease in each company for that period of time. Always being prepared to be if the other one needs someone. Theres not many people you find in life that you can do that with, Never Let Me Down was released through EMI in 1987 and was the first Bowie single to be made available on CD, including a newly remixed version. A digital download version of the tracks was available online in 2007. Bowie performed the song on BBCs Top of the Pops on 16 September 1987, the track was additionally performed live during his 1987 Glass Spider Tour and included as part of the Glass Spider concert film. The song was added to several albums, including Bowie, The Singles 1969-1993. French director Jean-Baptiste Mondino was selected by Bowie to direct a music video. Regarding this, Bowie said, Its an experiment, Im really putting myself in his hands, I think if I did it, it would be very abrasive, and Im not quite sure if thats how I want the song to come off visually. In concert it will be abrasive, it wont have the quality as the video. But I really think Mondino is a video maker. He just knows that this is his genre, hes like a craftsman and thats what hes trying to perfect, this craft of making his five minutes work

24.
Pina Bausch
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Philippina Pina Bausch was a German performer of modern dance, choreographer, dance teacher and ballet director. She created the company Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch which performs internationally, Bausch was born in Solingen, the third and youngest child of August and Anita Bausch, who owned a restaurant with guest rooms. The restaurant provided Pina with a venue to start performing at a young age. She would perform for all of the guests in the hotel and it was then that her parents saw her potential. At age 15, Pina was accepted into the Folkwangschule, the school was directed by Kurt Jooss, one of the pioneers of a new dance theater form called Tanztheater, that connected dance and dramatic work or theater. Bausch was soon performing with Tudor at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company, when in 1960 Taylor was invited to premiere a new work named Tablet in Spoleto, Italy, he took Bausch with him. In New York Bausch also performed with the Paul Sanasardo and Donya Feuer Dance Company and it was in New York City that Pina stated, New York is like a jungle but at the same time it gives you a feeling of total freedom. In these two years I have found myself In 1962, Bausch joined Jooss new Folkwang-Ballett as a soloist, in 1968, she choreographed her first piece, Fragmente, to music by Béla Bartók. In 1969, she succeeded Jooss as artistic director of the company, in 1973, Bausch started as artistic director of the Wuppertal Opera ballet, which was later renamed as the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, run as an independent company. The company has a repertoire of original pieces, and regularly tours throughout the world from its home base of the Opernhaus Wuppertal. Her best-known dance-theatre works include the melancholic Café Müller, in which dancers stumble around the stage crashing into tables, Bausch had most of the dancers perform this piece with their eyes closed. The thrilling Frühlingsopfer required the stage to be covered with soil. She stated, It is almost unimportant whether a work finds an understanding audience, one has to do it because one believes that it is the right thing to do. We are not only here to please, we cannot help challenging the spectator, one of the themes in her work was relationships. She had a specific process in which she went about creating emotions. Improvisation and the memory of own experiences and she asks questions-about parents, childhood, feelings in specific situations, the use of objects, dislikes, injuries, aspirations. From the answers develop gestures, sentences, dialogues, little scenes, the dancer is free to choose any expressive mode, whether it is verbal or physical when answering these questions. It is with this freedom that the dancer feels secure in going deep within themselves, when talking about her process she stated, “There is no book

25.
Abseiling
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An abseil, also called a rappel after its French name, is a controlled descent of a vertical drop, such as a rock face, using a rope. Climbers use this technique when a cliff or slope is too steep and/or dangerous to descend without protection, many climbers use this technique to protect established anchors from damage. Rope access technicians also use this as a method to access difficult-to-reach areas from above for various applications like maintenance, construction, inspection. Rescue teams are known for using this method as a way to access injured or stranded victims. The origin of the abseil is attributed to Jean Charlet-Straton, a Chamonix guide who lived from 1840–1925, Charlet originally devised the technique of the abseil method of roping down during a failed solo attempt of Petit Dru in 1876. After many attempts, some of them solo, he managed to reach the summit of the Petit Dru in 1879 in the company of two other Chamonix guides, Prosper Payot and Frédéric Folliguet, whom he hired, during that ascent, Charlet perfected the abseil. Ropes, Climbers often simply use their climbing ropes for abseiling, for many other applications, low-stretch rope called static rope is used to reduce bouncing and to allow easier ascending of the rope. Anchors for abseiling are sometimes made with trees or boulders, using webbing and cordellete, or also with rock climbing equipment, such as nuts, hexes, some climbing areas have fixed anchors such as bolts or pitons for rappelling off of without having to leave other gear behind. A descender or rappel device is a device or friction hitch that allows rope to be payed out in a controlled fashion, under load. The speed at which the abseiler descends is controlled by applying greater or lesser force on the rope below the device or altering the angle at which the rope exits the device, descenders can be task-designed or improvised from other equipment. Mechanical descenders include braking bars, the eight, the abseil rack, the bobbin, the gold tail. Some improvised descenders include the Munter hitch, a wrap, the basic crossed-carabiner brake. There is an older, more uncomfortable, method of wrapping the rope around ones body for friction instead of using a descender, a climbing harness is often used around the waist to secure the descender. A comfortable climbing harness is important for descents that may take many hours. A prusik, Klemheist knot, or autoblock knot may be used as safety back-up, commonly referred to as an autoblock, and is used as a back-up in the case of the abseiler losing control of the abseil. One of these friction hitches is wrapped around the rope below the device, using a short loop of smaller diameter cord or webbing. The prusik loop is attached to the belay loop or leg loop of the harness. Helmets may be worn to protect the head from bumps and falling rocks, a light source may be mounted on the helmet in order to keep the hands free in unlit areas

26.
Time (David Bowie song)
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Time is a song by David Bowie. An edited version of the song supplanted the release of the single Drive-In Saturday in the United States, the piece has been described as burlesque vamp, and compared to the cabaret music of Jacques Brel and Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill. Keyboardist Mike Garson said that he employed the old stride piano style from the 20s and I mixed it up with avant-garde jazz styles plus it had the element of show music, plus it was very European. Co-producer Ken Scott took credit for the idea of mixing the sound of Bowies breathing right up front when the music paused, just before guitarist Mick Ronson launched into his cacophonous solo. However, when Bowie came to perform the song on the U. S. television special The 1980 Floor Show in August 1973, conversely, RCA cut the line In quaaludes and red wine from the single, while Bowie retained it for The 1980 Floor Show. The phrase Billy Dolls refers to Billy Murcia, late drummer for the New York Dolls, like its parent album, Time has divided critical opinion. Time –3,38 The Prettiest Star –3,27 The Japanese release featured Panic in Detroit on the B-side, the live version recorded for The 1980 Floor Show on 20 October 1973 was released on the semi-legal album RarestOneBowie in 1994. A live version from the 1974 Diamond Dogs tour was released as a track on the Rykodisc release of David Live in 1990. The 2004 reissue of David Live inserted Time into its position in the concert track listing. Another live recording from the 1974 tour was released on the semi-legal album A Portrait in Flesh. A live version from the Glass Spider tour recorded at the Montreal Olympic Stadium on 30 August 1987 was released as track 11 on the disk of the limited edition 3-disc set released in 2007. It appeared on the Japanese compilation The Best of David Bowie, the single edit of the song was released on the bonus disc of the Aladdin Sane – 30th Anniversary Edition in 2003

27.
Up the Hill Backwards
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Up the Hill Backwards is a song from David Bowies 1980 album Scary Monsters. It was also issued as the fourth and final single from the album in March 1981. This was due to be the last David Bowie single on RCA, the lyric is often seen as a commentary on the public coverage of his divorce from Angela Bowie, one of several tracks on the album that muse over the double-edged sword of celebrity. It has also interpreted as facing up to crisis in general. Like the previous single, Scary Monsters, the track featured co-producer Tony Visconti on acoustic guitar, the B-side was Crystal Japan, an instrumental recorded in 1980 for a Japanese commercial for the sake Crystal Jun Rock, which also featured an appearance from Bowie. The uncommercial nature of Up the Hill Backwards, combined with the track having been available on the album for the past six months and it also briefly charted at No.49 in Canada. In the US, RCA only released a 12-inch single which was distributed with a set of 36 stamps, designed by David Bowie himself. The stamps are photographs of Bowie in his Pierrot costume, colored crayon-like, in a variety of poses and it was usually the first song performed, with Carlos Alomar playing a solo and being repeatedly told to shut up. The dance troupe then engaged in a short conversation ending with the wrong stuff being chanted. Bowie would then emerge from the top of the towering set and it was the B-side of the French release of the single Scary Monsters in January 1981. The Sound + Vision box set featured the song and it was included on The Best of David Bowie 1980/1987. Two slightly different authentic studio demos of the song exist on the bootleg Vampires of Human Flesh, pegg, Nicholas, The Complete David Bowie, Reynolds & Hearn Ltd,2000, ISBN 1-903111-14-5 Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics

28.
Day-In Day-Out
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Day-In Day-Out is a song recorded by English singer David Bowie, serving as the opening track for his seventeenth studio album, Never Let Me Down. It was issued as a single on 23 March 1987 ahead of the records release, the recording was solely written by Bowie, while production was handled by him along with David Richards. An R&B track, Day-In Day-Out criticizes the treatment of the homeless in the United States at that time, and deals with the depths a young mother has to sink to feed her child. Commercially, Day-In Day-Out was the most successful single from Never Let Me Down, Day-In Day-Out was written by Bowie at his home in Montreux, Switzerland, along with most of the rest of Never Let Me Down in mid-1986. It was recorded in the autumn of 1986 at Mountain Studios in the same city, musically, the recording is an R&B song, being reminiscent of some of the singers R&B work in the 1970s. One author said that it is an example of Bowies strength in the R&B genre, the lyrics of the song were compared by one writer to those of Dolly Partons 9 to 5, and deal with the depths a young mother has to sink to feed her child. Bowie claimed the song was selected as the single for Never Let Me Down more as a statement of energy about the album. It was released on 23 March 1987 by EMI on multiple 7 and 12 single formats, a video EP was also distributed that year. It earned a single airing on Spanish radio prior to the concerts and was never released as a stand-alone single, upon release, Day-In Day-Out received mixed reviews from music critics. Complaints about poor studio production were common, although publications did find the song to be fun and danceable. Pegg agreed, calling it one of the best tracks from the whole session. Then I put in the camera angles that I think would be interesting or different. And Julien puts in his input, I started working this way on the Ashes to Ashes video with David Mallet. It was my first real big attempt and it won awards at the time for being a new way of doing videos, Julien Temple and Bowie co-directed the video, which made the songs message explicit, showing a young couples struggle against an uncaring society. Tony Selznik taught Bowie to roller skate for the video, recalling in 2013, David came across as very humble and he was disillusioned with the music industry. I taught him to skate in a parking lot and we shot the video on Hollywood Boulevard at night, with me in a wig and leather jacket as his double for some scenes. The only bad fall involved the instructor, my wheels came off, I was bleeding everywhere, concerning the clips ban, Bowie confessed, I think its ludicrous. Got caught up in the yellow press kind of excitement because of what it looked like instead of what it said

29.
Absolute Beginners (David Bowie song)
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Absolute Beginners is a song written and recorded by David Bowie. It was the song to the 1986 film of the same name. Although the film was not a success, the song became one of Bowies most successful 1980s singles. It was released on 3 March 1986 and reached No.2 on the UK Singles Chart and it also became a top ten single on the main charts in eight other countries, his last song to accomplish that. It was less successful in the US, peaking at No.53 on the Billboard Hot 100, Bowie performed it live on his Glass Spider and 2000 tours. Bowie was good friends with the director, Julien Temple. Bowie agreed to Temples request to write music for the film if he could play the part of Vendice Partners. The sessions at Abbey Road Studios, London, were set up in a way, with a group of session musicians all receiving a card to work at the studio with Mr X. The sessions were completed rapidly, but the song was delayed due to the problems with completing the film, Virgin wanted the release to tie in with the films opening. The song featured Rick Wakeman on piano, who had performed on Bowies Space Oddity single. Shortly after the sessions wrapped, Mick Jagger flew in to record the charity cover of Dancing in the Street with Bowie, Bowie recorded the lead vocal of Absolute Beginners at Westside Studios in August. AllMusic described the song as the gem of his post-Lets Dance 80s output, don Wellers saxophone solo has been described by musicOMH as perhaps the best saxophone solo in a Bowie song. They characterised it as the sound of one man trying to expel his innards through the bell of his instrument. It was chosen by Jeremy Allen in The Guardian as one of Bowies ten of the best songs, biographer Paul Trynka described it as Bowies last great composition of the 1980s. Mojo chose it as number 61 in the countdown of Bowies 100 greatest songs, all tracks by David Bowie unless indicated. The video was a homage to an old British advert for Strand cigarettes, the ill-fated advertising tagline Youre never alone with a Strand is quoted by Partners in the film. The video also uses footage from the film, in 2016, Entertainment Weekly chose it as one of Bowies 20 best music videos. They stated the video does a far better job of expressing the noirish romanticism of MacInnes novel than the film did, the song was performed live during David Bowies 1987 Glass Spider Tour

30.
Loving the Alien
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Loving the Alien is a song written and recorded by David Bowie. It was the track to his sixteenth studio album Tonight. Loving the Alien peaked at No.19 in the UK Singles Chart, the song explored Bowies intense dislike of organized religion. Loving the Alien inspired the title of Christopher Sandfords 1997 biography of Bowie, as a demo track, the song was simply called 1. Bowie said Alien came about because of my feeling that so much history is wrong - as is being rediscovered all the time - and he recorded the demo in Montreux, Switzerland. He would later comment that the production on the song undid the power of the lyric, the music video was co-directed by Bowie with frequent collaborator David Mallet. Bowies biographer David Buckley called it the track on the album with the gravitas of much of his earlier work. Journalist Dylan Jones described it as definitely the best song from the Tonight album, yo Zushi of the New Statesman described the song as a seven-minute masterpiece. While critical of much of Bowies 1980s output in his appraisal of Best of Bowie in 2002, BBC reviewer Chris Jones stated, like watching a ballet through a telescope. Loving the Alien –4,43 Dont Look Down –4,04 The 7 was released in a sleeve that contained still images from the video on the inside. The 7 shaped picture disc contained the same tracks, Loving the Alien –7,27 Dont Look Down –4,50 Loving the Alien –7,14 The 12 single was released in a gatefold sleeve that covered in images from the video. The lyrics to Loving the Alien were also printed on the inner sleeve, a limited version of the 12 single also included a fold-out poster. Also available as a picture disc, re-mixed by Steve Thompson and Michael Barbiero. The ending guitar solo is also prominent in the extended dance mix. The Extended Dub Mix is a version of the track with full vocals. Loving the Alien –4,43 Dont Look Down –4,04 Loving the Alien –7,27 Loving the Alien –7,14 Dont Look Down –4,50 Released in 2007 Bowie performed the song on his 1987 Glass Spider Tour. The original uncensored video for Loving the Alien also appears on the Day-In Day-Out Video EP released in 1987

31.
China Girl (song)
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China Girl is a song written by David Bowie and Iggy Pop during their years in Berlin, first appearing on Pops debut solo album, The Idiot. The song became widely known when it was re-recorded by Bowie. The UK single release of Bowies version reached No.2 for one week on 14 June 1983, behind Every Breath You Take by the Police, while the US release reached No.10. Paul Trynka, the author of David Bowies biography, Starman, claims the song was inspired by Iggy Pops infatuation with Kuelan Nguyen, a beautiful Vietnamese woman. Nile Rodgers, the producer of David Bowies 1983 version of the song explained his view of its meaning, because China is China White which is heroin, girl is cocaine. I thought it was a song about speedballing, I thought, in the drug community in New York, coke is girl, and heroin is boy. So then I proceeded to do this arrangement which was ultra pop, because I thought that, being David Bowie, he would appreciate the irony of doing something so pop about something so taboo. And what was cool was that he said I love that. The music video, featuring New Zealand model Geeling Ng, was directed by David Mallet and shot mainly in the Chinatown district of Sydney, Australia. Along with his previous video for Lets Dance with the critique of racism in Australia, Bowie described the video as a very simple. The video consciously parodies Asian female stereotypes and it depicted as a hypermasculine protagonist in an interracial romance. The original video release includes the two lying naked in the surf, unedited versions were banned from New Zealand and some other countries at the time. The uncensored version was issued on the 1984 Video EP issued by Sony on Betamax, VHS, versions of the video included on subsequent video and DVD compilations are censored to remove the nudity. The original video went on to win an MTV video award for Best Male Video, the song was a regular for Bowies live shows for the rest of the 1980s. It was rehearsed for his appearance at the 1985 London Live Aid concert but along with the songs Fascination, the original Iggy Pop version is included in Pops compilation A Million in Prizes, The Anthology. The Boys Next Door – Live recording in Melbourne,1978

32.
Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) (song)
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Scary Monsters is the title track from David Bowies 1980 album Scary Monsters. It was also issued as the single from that album in January 1981. Musically the track was notable for its guitar work by Robert Fripp. The lyrics, sung by Bowie in an exaggerated Cockney accent, charted a womans withdrawal from the world, thematically it has been compared to Joy Divisions Shes Lost Control, and to the claustrophobic romance of Iggy Pops 1977 collaborations with Bowie, The Idiot and Lust for Life. The edited single reached No.20 in the UK charts, as well as 7 vinyl, it was issued in Compact Cassette format. It has since performed on a number of Bowie tours. Scary Monsters –3,27 Because Youre Young –4,51 The French release of the single had Up the Hill Backwards as the B-side, Bowie performed the song on Saturday Night Live on 8 February 1997. This was later released on the album Saturday Night Live -25 Years Volume 1, Bowie and Reeves Gabrels performed an all-acoustic country and western version of the song for the radio station WRXT in Chicago Il on 16 October 1997. Bowie performed the song with Nine Inch Nails numerous times during the Outside Tour

33.
Rebel Rebel
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Rebel Rebel is a song by David Bowie, released in 1974 as a single from the album Diamond Dogs. Cited as his track, it has been described as being effectively Bowies farewell to the glam rock movement that he had helped pioneer. The song is notable for its lyrics as well as its distinctive riff. Bowie himself later said, Its a fabulous riff, when I stumbled onto it, it was Oh, thank you. The single quickly became an anthem, the female equivalent of Bowies earlier hit for Mott the Hoople. It reached No.5 in the UK and No.64 in the USA, the single and album versions, released three months apart, feature slightly different mixes. The US release initially featured a different recording altogether, a revised mix that Bowie cut in New York in April 1974. Within a couple of months it was withdrawn and replaced by the UK single version, after retiring the song on his 1990 Sound+Vision Tour, Bowie brought Rebel Rebel back for the 1999 Hours promotional tour. In early 2003, Bowie recorded a new version of the song, featuring an arrangement by Mark Plati and this was issued on a bonus disc that came with some versions of the Reality album the same year, and on the 30th Anniversary Edition of Diamond Dogs in 2004. Also in 2004, the track was blended in a mash-up with the Reality song Never Get Old, Rebel Rebel –4,20 Queen Bitch –3,13 The US and Canadian version of this single had Lady Grinning Soul as the B-side. This version was issued on the Dutch release Rock Concert. Another live recording from the 1974 tour was released on the semi-legal album A Portrait in Flesh, a live performance recorded on 23 March 1976 was released on Live Nassau Coliseum 76, part of the 2010 reissues of Station to Station. A live performance filmed on 12 September 1983 was included on the Serious Moonlight live VHS/laserdisc, Bowie performed the song during his set at Live Aid in 1985. The song was performed during 1987s Glass Spider Tour and released on the subsequent Glass Spider live VHS, Bowie performed the song on Later. With Jools Holland, a UK television programme in 2002, the new version of Rebel Rebel from 2003 was performed live on A Reality Tour. It was used as the piece for the bulk of the tour. The original single mix of the song appeared on CD in 2016 on Re, Call 2, part of the Who Can I Be Now. The 2003 rerecording was released on the Charlies Angels, Full Throttle soundtrack, the Limited Edition bonus disc of Reality, a cover version of the guitar intro was featured in a series of Mazda car advertisements in the US and Canada in 1998/1999

34.
"Heroes" (David Bowie song)
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Heroes is a song by the English musician David Bowie, written by Bowie and Brian Eno. Produced by Bowie and Tony Visconti, it was recorded in July and August 1977, a product of Bowies Berlin period, the track was not a huge hit in the UK or US at the time, but has gone on to become one of Bowies signature songs. In January 2016, following Bowies death, the reached a new peak of number 12 in the UK Singles Chart. Heroes has been cited as Bowies second-most covered song after Rebel Rebel, inspired by the sight of Bowies producer / engineer Tony Visconti embracing his girlfriend by the Berlin Wall, the song tells the story of two lovers, one from East and one from West Berlin. Following Bowies death in January 2016, the German government thanked Bowie for helping to bring down the Wall, Bowie scholar David Buckley has written that Heroes is perhaps pops definitive statement of the potential triumph of the human spirit over adversity. The title of the song is a reference to the 1975 track Hero by German krautrock band Neu. whom Bowie and it was one of the early tracks recorded during the album sessions, but remained an instrumental until towards the end of production. The quotation marks in the title of the song, an affectation, were designed to impart an ironic quality on the otherwise highly romantic, even triumphant, words. The music, co-written by Bowie and Eno, has likened to a Wall of Sound production. Eno has said that musically the piece always sounded grand and heroic, the basic backing track on the recording consists of a conventional arrangement of piano, bass guitar, rhythm guitar and drums. However the remaining instrumental additions are highly distinctive and these largely consist of synthesizer parts by Eno using an EMS VCS3 to produce detuned low-frequency drones, with the beat frequencies from the three oscillators producing a juddering effect. Heroes was released in a variety of languages and lengths, despite a large promotional push, including Bowies first live Top of the Pops appearance since 1973, Heroes only reached number 24 in the UK charts, and failed to make the US Billboard Hot 100. In Italy, the song was certified gold by the Federation of the Italian Music Industry, writing for NME on its release, Charlie Gillett slated the record saying, Well he had a pretty good run for our money, for a guy who was no singer. But I think his time has been and gone, and this just sounds weary, then again, maybe the ponderous heavy riff will be absorbed on the radio, and the monotonous feel may just be hypnotic enough to drag people into buying it. In February 1999, Q Magazine listed Heroes as one of the 100 greatest singles of all time as voted by the readers, in March 2005, the same magazine placed it at number 56 in its list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks. In 2004, Rolling Stone rated Heroes number 46 in its list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and it was included in 2008s The Pitchfork Media 500, Our Guide to the Greatest Songs from Punk to the Present. John J. Miller of National Review rated Heroes number 21 on a list of the 50 greatest conservative rock songs due to its political context. Uncut placed Heroes as number 1 in its 30 greatest Bowie songs in 2008, Bowie regularly performed the song in concert. It was used in Chris Petits film Radio On two years after its release, the song has become a mainstay of advertising in recent years, gracing efforts by Microsoft, Kodak, CGU Insurance, HBO Olé and various sporting promoters throughout the world

35.
Time Will Crawl
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Time Will Crawl is a song recorded by English singer David Bowie, serving as the second single for his seventeenth album, Never Let Me Down. It was written by Bowie and produced by him and David Richards, released in 1987 by EMI, the recording addresses the destruction of the planet by pollution and industry, the Chernobyl disaster was a direct influence on the lyrics. The accompanying video served as a teaser to Bowies Glass Spider Tour, music critics were positive toward Time Will Crawl, commending its lyrics and production, and describing it one of Bowies best efforts of the mid– to late–1980s. Additionally, Bowie later called the one of his favorites from his entire career. Commercially, the peaked at number 33 on the UK Singles Chart. Time Will Crawl was written and recorded by Bowie in mid– to late–1986 at Mountain Studios in Montreux and he produced the recording alongside David Richards. Lyrically, the addresses the pollution and destruction of the planet by industry. Bowie has cited hearing of the Chernobyl disaster in April 1986 as the genesis of the lyrics and he said, I was taking a break from recording it was a beautiful day and we were outside on a small piece of lawn facing the Alps and the lake. Our engineer, who had been listening to the radio, shot out of the studio and shouted, Theres a whole lot of shit going down in Russia. The Swiss news had picked up a Norwegian radio station that was screaming – to anyone who would listen – that huge billowing clouds were moving over from the Motherland and they werent rain clouds. In another contemporary interview, Bowie said that the deals with the idea that someone in ones own community could be the one responsible for blowing up the world. At the time, he stated that it was his favorite song from the album. Time Will Crawl was released in June 1987 by EMI, featuring a cover version Tina Turners Girls as its B-side, in 2008, a newly-remixed version of the song was included on Bowies iSelect compilation album, his list of all-time favorites. McNulty removed the drum track, added new drum overdubs by drummer Sterling Campbell and included further new instrumentation. At that time, Bowie indicated a desire to improve the rest of the songs from Never Let Me Down, but it never materialized. An accompanying music video was directed by Tim Pope, making his first and only appearance as a director of a Bowie video, the dancers from the tour all featured in the video alongside tour guitarist Peter Frampton. Toni Basil, Bowies long-time friend, was responsible for the choreography, the video was later released on Bowie – The Video Collection, Best of Bowie and The Best of David Bowie 1980–1987, the limited edition 12 single featured a still from the video on its cover. Time Will Crawl was performed live in 1987 on all dates of his Glass Spider Tour, however, his performance was later uploaded onto YouTube

36.
Let's Dance (David Bowie song)
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Lets Dance is the title-track from English singer David Bowies 1983 album of the same name. It was also released as the first single from that album in 1983, stevie Ray Vaughan played the guitar solo at the end of the song. The single was one of Bowies fastest selling, entering the UK Singles Chart at No.5 on its first week of release, soon afterwards, the single topped the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Bowies second and last single to reach number-one in the U. S. In Oceania, it narrowly missed topping the Australian charts, peaking at No,2, but peaked at number-one for 4 consecutive weeks in New Zealand. The single became one of the best selling of the year across North America, Central Europe, the music video was made in March 1983 by David Mallet on location in Australia including a bar in Carinda in New South Wales and the Warrumbungle National Park near Coonabarabran. In the beginning it featured Bowie with a bass player inside the one-room pub at the Carinda Hotel. The couple in this scene and in the video is played by Terry Roberts and Joelene King. As Bowie opted for real people, some residents of the 194-souls village of Carinda are in the pub too and they do not believe who David is nor what the take is all about, hence their behaviour towards the couple as seen in the video is real. The red shoes mentioned in the lyrics appear in several contexts. The couple wanders solemnly through the outback with some other Aboriginals and they are the simplicity of the capitalist society and sort of striving for success - black music is all about Put on your red shoes, as Bowie confirmed. Soon, the couple is visiting museums, enjoying candlelit dinners and casually dropping credit cards, drunk on modernity and consumerism. During a stroll through an arcade of shops, the spots the same pair of red pumps for sale in a window display, their personal key to joy. They toss away the magic kicks in revulsion, stomping them into the dust and return to the mountains, Bowie described this video as very simple, very direct statements against racism and oppression, but also a very direct statement about integration of one culture with another. He inserted numerous references to the Stolen Generations, the song introduced Bowie to a new, younger audience oblivious to his former career in the 1970s. His next two albums, made as an attempt to cater to his audience, suffered creatively as a result. In 2007, Bowie gave R&B singer Craig David permission to sample the song for his single Hot Stuff, M. Ward covered the song on his 2003 album Transfiguration of Vincent. The track was a regular on the Serious Moonlight Tour, and was released on the 1983 concert video Serious Moonlight. The song was performed live on Bowies 1987 Glass Spider Tour, and on his 1990 Sound+Vision Tour